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Outstanding Organizations: No Denial Allowed

Posted by John G. Miller on June 17, 2013

Hello to all. John here. This is one of those blogs that I would forward to my colleagues and bluntly pose this question:

This isn’t us, is it?!?:

“Complacency is a state of satisfaction combined with an unawareness of potential danger, and it’s often characterized by one word: smug. Outstanding organizations know that “smug” doesn’t work. They understand the need to beat back complacency again and again.” Outstanding! Chapter 43: “Stay Alarmed”

In the late 1980s, early in my career selling management training, a mentor would say this after a client meeting that didn’t go as well as I’d planned: “Remember, just because they deny they have problems doesn’t mean they don’t have any.”

Denial. It’s a dangerous place to live.

Whenever any of us on the QBQ, Inc. team comes in to teach “Personal Accountability and the QBQ!” we always provide a pre-session questionnaire. Here is one of the questions we ask:

“Ideally, how would you like to see your organization’s culture change?”

Some clients give us little, some give us a lot. I spoke recently for an extremely successful corporation that all of you would know by name. If you’ve ever watched an NFL game or two on Sundays, you’ve seen their commercials.
This organization would be described as “outstanding” by any measure, but they answered our culture question so candidly, so forthrightly, that I was once again reminded of this truth:

Outstanding organizations, and the people that work for them, are never “smug” and rarely satisfied.

You see, in some organizations, the goal seems to be this: “We Will Be Nothing Less Than Mediocre!”
But the client I just visited? Totally successful and yet here are the cultural changes people there desire:

• Greater cross-functional teamwork at all levels.
• Less concern over who gets the credit.
• Less confusion over who owns decisions.
• More openness, transparency, and candid conversations.
• People/teams recognized more for contributions to projects.
• Less political; greater focus on adding value than “who you know.”
• Clearer prioritization of key initiatives.
• Elimination of “silos.”
• Quicker to adapt and change.
• More effective planning and fewer fire drills.
• Faster decision making.

Yes, you could apply any of these to a thousand organizations. What is special here is not the specific problems identified, but the fact that this list was shared with us at all … by people at all levels who already work for an outstanding organization.

Dangerous!!!

Pizza king Papa John (John Schnatter) shared this with me: “John,” he said, “I’ve always found that people who struggle are hard on others, but those who do well in life are hard on themselves.”
And so it is with organizations. The outstanding ones are rarely satisfied—always fighting the battle of complacency—and never allow “smug” or “denialism” to creep into their world.

Remember—as we write in Outstanding!—we can only coast one direction:

Downhill.

Exit Questions:
Do denial and/or complacency exist in your organization? Are departments, teams, and people coasting? If the question, “How would you like to see your culture change?” was posed where you work, how candidly would people respond? Share below!

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