فصل 6

PART 3

LEADERS NEED A FOLLOWING

6

THE EMERGENCE OF TRUST

To say that most of the company’s employees were embarrassed to work there was an understatement. It was no secret that the employees felt mistreated. And if a company mistreats their people, just watch how the employees treat their customers. Mud rolls down a hill, and if you’re the one standing at the bottom, you get hit with the full brunt. In a company, that’s usually the customer. Throughout the 1980s, this was life at Continental Airlines—the worst airline in the industry.

“I could see Continental’s biggest problem the second I walked in the door in February of 1994,” Gordon Bethune wrote in From Worst to First, the chief executive’s firsthand account of Continental’s turnaround. “It was a crummy place to work.” Employees were “surly to customers, surly to each other, and ashamed of their company. And you can’t have a good product without people who like coming to work. It just can’t be done,” he recounts.

Herb Kelleher, the head of Southwest for twenty years, was considered a heretic for positing the notion that it is a company’s responsibility to look after the employees first. Happy employees ensure happy customers, he said. And happy customers ensure happy shareholders—in that order. Fortunately, Bethune shared this heretical belief.

Some would argue that the reason Continental’s culture was so poisonous was that the company was struggling. They would tell you that it’s hard for executives to focus on anything other than survival when a company is facing hard times. “Once we get profitable again,” the logic went, “then we will take a look at everything else.” And without a doubt, throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Continental struggled. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection twice in eight years—once in 1983 and again in 1991—and managed to go through ten CEOs in a decade. In 1994, the year Bethune took over as the newest CEO, the company had lost $600 million and ranked last in every measurable performance category.

But all that didn’t last long once Bethune arrived. The very next year Continental made $250 million and was soon ranked as one of the best companies to work for in America. And while Bethune made significant changes to improve the operations, the greatest gains were in a performance category that is nearly impossible to measure: trust.

Trust does not emerge simply because a seller makes a rational case why the customer should buy a product or service, or because an executive promises change. Trust is not a checklist. Fulfilling all your responsibilities does not create trust. Trust is a feeling, not a rational experience. We trust some people and companies even when things go wrong, and we don’t trust others even though everything might have gone exactly as it should have. A completed checklist does not guarantee trust. Trust begins to emerge when we have a sense that another person or organization is driven by things other than their own self-gain.

With trust comes a sense of value—real value, not just value equated with money. Value, by definition, is the transference of trust. You can’t convince someone you have value, just as you can’t convince someone to trust you. You have to earn trust by communicating and demonstrating that you share the same values and beliefs. You have to talk about your WHY and prove it with WHAT you do. Again, a WHY is just a belief, HOWs are the actions we take to realize that belief, and WHATs are the results of those actions. When all three are in balance, trust is built and value is perceived. This is what Bethune was able to do.

There are many talented executives with the ability to manage operations, but great leadership is not based solely on great operational ability. Leading is not the same as being the leader. Being the leader means you hold the highest rank, either by earning it, good fortune or navigating internal politics. Leading, however, means that others willingly follow you—not because they have to, not because they are paid to, but because they want to. Frank Lorenzo, CEO before Bethune, may have been the leader of Continental, but Gordon Bethune knew how to lead the company. Those who lead are able to do so because those who follow trust that the decisions made at the top have the best interest of the group at heart. In turn, those who trust work hard because they feel like they are working for something bigger than themselves.

Prior to Bethune’s arrival, the twentieth floor of the company’s headquarters, the executive floor, was off-limits to most people. The executive suites were locked. Only those with a rank of senior vice president or higher were permitted to visit. Key cards were required to get onto the floor, security cameras were ubiquitous and armed guards roamed the floor to eliminate any doubt that the security was no joke. Clearly, the company suffered from trust issues. One story handed down was that Frank Lorenzo would not even drink a soda on a Continental plane if he didn’t open the can himself. He didn’t trust anyone, so it is no great leap of logic that no one trusted him. It’s hard to lead when those whom you are supposed to be leading are not inclined to follow.

Bethune was very different. He understood that beyond the structure and systems a company is nothing more than a collection of people. “You don’t lie to your own doctor,” he says, “and you can’t lie to your own employees.” Bethune set out to change the culture by giving everyone something they could believe in. And what, specifically, did he give them to believe in that could turn the worst airline in the industry into the best airline in the industry with all the same people and all the same equipment?

In college I had a roommate named Howard Jeruchimowitz. Now an attorney in Chicago, Howard learned from an early age about a very simple human desire. Growing up in the suburbs of New York City, he played outfield on the worst team in the Little League. They lost nearly every game they played—and not by small margins either; they were regularly annihilated. Their coach was a good man and wanted to instill a positive attitude in the young athletes. After one of their more embarrassing losses, the coach pulled the team together and reminded them, “It doesn’t matter who wins or loses, what matters is how you play the game.” It was at this point that young Howard raised his hand and asked, “Then why do we keep score?” Howard understood from a very young age the very human desire to win. No one likes to lose, and most healthy people live their life to win. The only variation is the score we use. For some it’s money, for others it’s fame or awards. For some it’s power, love, a family or spiritual fulfillment. The metric is relative, but the desire is the same. A billionaire doesn’t need to work. Money becomes a way to keep score—a relative account of how things are going. Even a billionaire who loses millions due to poor decisions can get depressed. Although the money may have zero impact on his lifestyle, no one likes to lose.

The drive to win is not, per se, a bad thing. Problems arise, however, when the metric becomes the only measure of success, when what you achieve is no longer tied to WHY you set out to achieve it in the first place.

Bethune set out to prove to everyone at Continental that if they wanted to win, they could win. And most of the employees stuck around to find out if he was right. There were a few exceptions. One executive who once held up a plane because he was running late was asked to leave, as were thirty-nine more of the top sixty executives who didn’t believe. No matter how experienced they were or what they brought to the table, they were asked to leave if they weren’t team players and weren’t able to adapt to the new culture that Bethune was trying to build. There was no room for those who didn’t believe in the new Continental.

Bethune knew that building a team to go out and win meant more than giving a few rah-rah speeches and bonuses for the top brass if they hit certain revenue targets. He knew that if he wanted to build a real, lasting success, people had to win not for him, not for the shareholders and not even for the customer. For the success to last the employees of Continental had to want to win for themselves.

Everything he talked about was in terms of how it benefited the employees. Instead of telling them to keep the planes clean for customers, he pointed out something more obvious. Every day they came to work on a plane. The passengers left after their flight, but many of the flight attendants had to stay on for at least one more trip. It’s just nicer to come to work when the environment is cleaner.

Bethune also got rid of all the security on the twentieth floor. He instituted an open-door policy and made himself incredibly accessible. It was common for him to show up and sling bags with some of the baggage handlers at the airport. From now on, this was a family and everyone had to work together.

Bethune focused on the things they knew to be important, and to an airline the most important thing is to get the planes running on time. In the early 1990s, before Bethune arrived, Continental had the lowest on-time rating of the nation’s ten largest airlines. So Bethune told employees that each month Continental’s on-time percentage ranked in the top five, every employee would receive a check for $65. When you consider that Continental had 40,000 employees in 1995, every on-time month cost the airline a whopping $2.5 million, But Bethune knew he was getting a deal: being chronically late was costing it $5 million a month in expenses like missed connections and putting passengers up overnight. But most important to Bethune was what the bonus program did for the company culture: it got tens of thousands of employees, including managers, all pointed in the same direction for the first time in years.

Gone were the days when only the brass would enjoy the benefits of success. Everyone got their $65 when the airline did well and no one got it when the airline missed its targets. Bethune even insisted that a separate check be sent out. It wasn’t just added to their salary check. This was different. This was a symbol of winning. And on every check a message reminded them WHY they came to work: “Thank you for helping make Continental one of the best.”

“We measured things the employees could truly control,” Bethune said. “We made the stakes something the employees would win or lose on together, not separately.”

Everything they did made people feel like they were in it together. And they were.

The Only Difference Between You and a Caveman Is the Car You Drive

The reason the human race has been so successful is not because we’re the strongest animals—far from it. Size and might alone do not guarantee success. We’ve succeeded as a species because of our ability to form cultures. Cultures are groups of people who come together around a common set of values and beliefs. When we share values and beliefs with others, we form trust. Trust of others allows us to rely on others to help protect our children and ensure our personal survival. The ability to leave the den to hunt or explore with confidence that the community will protect your family and your stuff until you return is one of the most important factors in the survival of an individual and the advancement of our species.

That we trust people with common values and beliefs is not, in itself, a profound assertion. There is a reason we’re not friends with everyone we meet. We’re friends with people who see the world the way we see it, who share our views and our belief set. No matter how good a match someone looks on paper, that doesn’t guarantee a friendship. You can think of it on a macro scale also. The world is filled with different cultures. Being American is not better than being French. They are just different cultures—not better or worse, just different. American culture strongly values ideals of entrepreneurship, independence and self-reliance. We call our WHY—the American Dream. French culture strongly values ideals of unified identity, group reliance and joie de vivre. (Notice that we use the French word to describe the joy-of-life lifestyle. Coincidence? Perhaps.) Some people are good fits in French culture and some people are good fits in American culture. It is not a matter of better or worse, they are just different.

Most people who are born and raised in one culture will, for obvious reasons, end up being a reasonably good fit in that culture, but not always. There are people who grew up in France who never quite felt like they belonged; they were misfits in their own culture. So they moved, maybe to America. Drawn to the feelings they had for America’s WHY, they followed the American Dream and emigrated.

It is always said that America is fueled in large part by immigrants. But it is completely false that all immigrants make productive members of a society. It’s not true that all immigrants have an entrepreneurial spirit—just the ones that are viscerally drawn to America. That’s what a WHY does. When it is clearly understood, it attracts people who believe the same thing. And assuming they are good fits for what Americans believe and how they do things, those immigrants will say of America, “I love it here,” or “I love this country.” This visceral reaction has less to do with America and more to do with them. It’s how they feel about their own opportunity and their own ability to thrive in a culture in which they feel like they belong versus the one they came from.

And within the big WHY that is America, it breaks down even further. Some people are better fits in New York and some are better fits in Minneapolis. One culture is not better or worse than the other, they are just different. Many people dream of moving to New York, for example, attracted to the glamour or the perception of opportunity. They arrive with aspirations of making it big, but they fail to consider whether they will fit into the culture before they make their move. Some make it. But so many don’t. Over and over, I’ve seen people come to New York with big hopes and dreams, but either couldn’t find the job they wanted or they found it but couldn’t take the pressure. They are not dumb or bad or poor workers. They were just bad fits. They either stay in New York and exert more effort than they need to, hating their jobs and their lives, or they move. If they move to a city in which they are better fits—Chicago or San Francisco or somewhere else—they often end up much happier and more successful. New York is not rationally better than other cities, it’s just not right for everyone. Like all cities, it’s only right for those who are good fits.

The same can be said for any place that has a strong culture or recognizable personality. We do better in cultures in which we are good fits. We do better in places that reflect our own values and beliefs. Just as the goal is not to do business with anyone who simply wants what you have, but to do business with people who believe what you believe, so too is it beneficial to live and work in a place where you will naturally thrive because your values and beliefs align with the values and beliefs of that culture.

Now consider what a company is. A company is a culture. A group of people brought together around a common set of values and beliefs. It’s not products or services that bind a company together. It’s not size and might that make a company strong, it’s the culture—the strong sense of beliefs and values that everyone, from the CEO to the receptionist, all share. So the logic follows, the goal is not to hire people who simply have a skill set you need, the goal is to hire people who believe what you believe.

Finding the People Who Believe What You Believe

Early in the twentieth century, the English adventurer Ernest Shackleton set out to explore the Antarctic. Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian, had only just become the first explorer ever to reach the South Pole, leaving one remaining conquest: the crossing of the continent via the southernmost tip of the earth.

The land part of the expedition would start at the frigid Weddell Sea, below South America, and travel 1,700 miles across the pole to the Ross Sea, below New Zealand. The cost, Shackleton estimated at the time, would be about $250,000. “The crossing of the south polar continent will be the biggest polar journey ever attempted,” Shackleton told a reporter for the New York Times on December 29, 1913. “The unknown fields in the world which are still unconquered are narrowing down, but there still remains this great work.” On December 5, 1914, Shackleton and a crew of twenty-seven men set out for the Weddell Sea on the Endurance, a 350-ton ship that had been constructed with funds from private donors, the British government and the Royal Geographical Society. By then, World War I was raging in Europe, and money was growing more scarce. Donations from English schoolchildren paid for the dog teams.

But the crew of the Endurance would never reach the continent of Antarctica.

Just a few days out of South Georgia Island in the southern Atlantic, the ship encountered mile after mile of pack ice, and was soon trapped as winter moved in early and with fury. Ice closed in around the ship “like an almond in a piece of toffee,” a crew member wrote. Shackleton and his crew were stranded in the Antarctic for ten months as the Endurance drifted slowly north, until the pressure of the ice floes finally crushed the ship. On November 21, 1915, the crew watched as she sank in the frigid waters of the Weddell Sea.

Stranded on the ice, the crew of the Endurance boarded their three lifeboats and landed on tiny Elephant Island. There Shackleton left behind all but five of his men and embarked on a hazardous journey across 800 miles of rough seas to find help. Which, eventually, they did.

What makes the story of the Endurance so remarkable, however, is not the expedition, it’s that throughout the whole ordeal no one died. There were no stories of people eating others and no mutiny.

This was not luck. This was because Shackleton hired good fits. He found the right men for the job. When you fill an organization with good fits, those who believe what you believe, success just happens. And how did Shackleton find this amazing crew? With a simple ad in the London Times.

Compare that to how we hire people. Like Shackleton, we run ads in the newspaper, or on the modern equivalents, Craigslist or Monster.com. Sometimes we hire a recruiter to find someone for us, but the process is largely the same. We provide a list of qualifications for the job and expect that the best candidate will be the one who meets those requirements.

The issue is how we write those ads. They are all about WHAT and not about WHY. A want ad might say, for example, “Account executive needed, minimum five years’ experience, must have working knowledge of industry. Come work for a fantastic, fast-growing company with great pay and great benefits.” The ad may produce loads of applicants, but how do we know which is the right fit?

Shackleton’s ad for crew members was different. His did not say WHAT he was looking for. His ad did not say:

“Men needed for expedition. Minimum five years’ experience. Must know how to hoist mainsail. Come work for a fantastic captain.”

Rather, Shackleton was looking for those with something more. He was looking for a crew that belonged on such an expedition. His actual ad ran like this:

“Men wanted for Hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.”

The only people who applied for the job were those who read the ad and thought it sounded great. They loved insurmountable odds. The only people who applied for the job were survivors. Shackleton hired only people who believed what he believed. Their ability to survive was guaranteed. When employees belong, they will guarantee your success. And they won’t be working hard and looking for innovative solutions for you, they will be doing it for themselves.

What all great leaders have in common is the ability to find good fits to join their organizations—those who believe what they believe. Southwest Airlines is a great example of a company with a knack for hiring good fits. Their ability to find people who embody their cause makes it much easier for them to provide great service. As Herb Kelleher famously said, “You don’t hire for skills, you hire for attitude. You can always teach skills.” This is all fine and good; the problem is, which attitude? What if their attitude is not one that fits your culture?

I love asking companies whom they like to hire, and one of the most common answers I am given is, “We hire only passionate people.” But how do you know if someone is passionate for interviewing, but not so passionate for working? The truth is, almost every person on the planet is passionate, we are just not all passionate for the same things. Starting with WHY when hiring dramatically increases your ability to attract those who are passionate for what you believe. Simply hiring people with a solid résumé or great work ethic does not guarantee success. The best engineer at Apple, for example, would likely be miserable if he worked at Microsoft. Likewise, the best engineer at Microsoft would probably not thrive at Apple. Both are highly experienced and work hard. Both may come highly recommended. However, each engineer does not fit the culture of the other’s company. The goal is to hire those who are passionate for your WHY, your purpose, cause or belief, and who have the attitude that fits your culture. Once that is established, only then should their skill set and experience be evaluated. Shackleton could have had the most experienced crew money could buy, but if they weren’t able to connect on a level much deeper than their ability, their survival would not have been a foregone conclusion.

For years, Southwest didn’t have a complaints department—they didn’t need one. Though Kelleher rightly talked about the need to hire for attitude, the airline in fact deserves more credit for hiring the good fits responsible for providing great service. Kelleher was not the only one making the hiring decisions, and asking everyone to simply trust their gut is too risky. Their genius came from figuring out why some people were such good fits and then developing systems to find more of them.

In the 1970s, Southwest Airlines decided to put their flight attendants in hot pants and go-go boots as part of their uniforms (hey, it was the 1970s). It wasn’t their idea; Pacific Southwest, the California-based airline after which Southwest modeled itself, did it first, Southwest simply copied them. Unlike Pacific Southwest, however, Southwest figured out something that would prove invaluable. They realized that when they recruited flight attendants, the only people who applied for the job were cheerleaders and majorettes. That’s because they were the only people who didn’t mind wearing the new uniforms. Cheerleaders and majorettes, however, fit in perfectly at Southwest. They didn’t just have a great attitude, their whole disposition was about cheering people on. Spreading optimism. Leading crowds to believe that “we can win.” They were perfect fits at a company that was the champion of the common man. Realizing this, Southwest started to recruit only cheerleaders and majorettes.

Great companies don’t hire skilled people and motivate them, they hire already motivated people and inspire them. People are either motivated or they are not. Unless you give motivated people something to believe in, something bigger than their job to work toward, they will motivate themselves to find a new job and you’ll be stuck with whoever’s left.

Give ‘Em a Cathedral

Consider the story of two stonemasons. You walk up to the first stonemason and ask, “Do you like your job?” He looks up at you and replies, “I’ve been building this wall for as long as I can remember. The work is monotonous. I work in the scorching hot sun all day. The stones are heavy and lifting them day after day can be backbreaking. I’m not even sure if this project will be completed in my lifetime. But it’s a job. It pays the bills.” You thank him for his time and walk on.

About thirty feet away, you walk up to a second stonemason. You ask him the same question, “Do you like your job?” He looks up and replies, “I love my job. I’m building a cathedral. Sure, I’ve been working on this wall for as long as I can remember, and yes, the work is sometimes monotonous. I work in the scorching hot sun all day. The stones are heavy and lifting them day after day can be backbreaking. I’m not even sure if this project will be completed in my lifetime. But I’m building a cathedral.” WHAT these two stonemasons are doing is exactly the same; the difference is, one has a sense of purpose. He feels like he belongs. He comes to work to be a part of something bigger than the job he’s doing. Simply having a sense of WHY changes his entire view of his job. It makes him more productive and certainly more loyal. Whereas the first stonemason would probably take another job for more pay, the inspired stonemason works longer hours and would probably turn down an easier, higher-paying job to stay and be a part of the higher cause. The second stonemason does not see himself as any more or less important than the guy making the stained glass windows or even the architect. They are all working together to build the cathedral. It is this bond that creates camaraderie. And that camaraderie and trust is what brings success. People working together for a common cause.

Companies with a strong sense of WHY are able to inspire their employees. Those employees are more productive and innovative, and the feeling they bring to work attracts other people eager to work there as well. It’s not such a stretch to see why the companies that we love to do business with are also the best employers. When people inside the company know WHY they come to work, people outside the company are vastly more likely to understand WHY the company is special. In these organizations, from the management on down, no one sees themselves as any more or any less than anyone else. They all need each other.

When Motivated by WHY, Success Just Happens

It was a turn-of-the-century version of the dot-com boom. The promise of a revolutionary new technology was changing the way people imagined the future. And there was a race to see who could do it first. It was the end of the nineteenth century and the new technology was the airplane. One of the best-known men in the field was Samuel Pierpont Langley. Like many other inventors of his day, he was attempting to build the world’s first heavier-than-air flying machine. The goal was to be the first to achieve machine-powered, controlled, manned flight. The good news was Langley had all the right ingredients for the enormous task; he had, what most would define as, the recipe for success.

Langley had achieved some renown within the academic community as an astronomer, which earned him high-ranking and prestigious positions. He was secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. He had been an assistant in the Harvard College Observatory and professor of mathematics at the United States Naval Academy. Langley was very well connected. His friends included some of the most powerful men in government and business, including Andrew Carnegie and Alexander Graham Bell. He was also extremely well funded. The War Department, the precursor the Department of Defense, had given him $50,000 for the project, a lot of money in those days. Money was no object.

Langley assembled some of the best and brightest minds of the day. His dream team included test pilot Charles Manly, a brilliant Cornell-trained mechanical engineer, and Stephan Balzer, the developer of the first car in New York. Langley and his team used the finest materials. The market conditions were perfect and his PR was great. The New York Times followed him around everywhere. Everyone knew Langley and was rooting for his success.

But there was a problem.

Langley had a bold goal, but he didn’t have a clear sense of WHY. His purpose for wanting to build the plane was defined in terms of WHAT he was doing and WHAT he could get. He had had a passion for aeronautics since a very young age, but he did not have a cause to champion. More than anything else, Langley wanted to be first. He wanted to be rich and he wanted to be famous. That was his driving motivation.

Although already well regarded in his own field, he craved the kind of fame of a Thomas Edison or Alexander Graham Bell, the kind that comes only with inventing something big. Langley saw the airplane as his ticket to fame and fortune. He was smart and motivated. He had what we still assume is the recipe for success: plenty of cash, the best people and ideal market conditions. But few of us have ever heard of Samuel Pierpont Langley.

A few hundred miles away in Dayton, Ohio, Orville and Wilbur Wright were also building a flying machine. Unlike Langley, the Wright brothers did not have the recipe for success. Worse, they seemed to have the recipe for failure. There was no funding for their venture. No government grants. No high-level connections. The Wright brothers funded their dream with the proceeds from their bicycle shop. Not a single person working on the team, including Orville and Wilbur, had a college education; some did not even finish high school. What the Wright brothers were doing wasn’t any different from Langley or all the others trying to build a flying machine. But the Wright brothers did have something very special. They had a dream. They knew WHY it was important to build this thing. They believed that if they could figure out this flying machine, it would change the world. They imagined the benefits to everyone else if they were successful.

“Wilbur and Orville were true scientists, deeply and genuinely concerned about the physical problem they were trying to solve—the problem of balance and flight,” said James Tobin, the Wright brothers’ biographer. Langley, on the other hand, was consumed with acquiring the level of prestige of his associates like Alexander Graham Bell, fame that he knew would come only with a major scientific breakthrough. Langley, Tobin said, “did not have the Wrights’ passion for flight, but rather was looking for achievement.” Orville and Wilbur preached what they believed and inspired others in the community to join them in their cause. The proof of their commitment was self-evident. With failure after failure, most would have given up, but not the Wright brothers’ team. The team was so inspired that no matter how many setbacks they suffered they would show up for more. Every time the Wright brothers went out to make a test flight, so the stories go, they would take five sets of parts with them, because they knew that’s how many times they were likely to fail before deciding to come home for the day.

Then it happened. On December 17, 1903, on a field in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Wright brothers took to the sky. A fifty-nine-second flight at an altitude of 120 feet at the speed of a jog was all it took to usher in a new technology that would change the world.

Remarkable as the achievement was, it went relatively unnoticed. The New York Times was not there to cover the story. Driven by something bigger than fame and glory, the Wright brothers were content to wait to tell the world. They understood its true significance to the world.

What Langley and the Wright brothers were trying to create was exactly the same; both were building the same product. Both the Wright brothers and Langley were highly motivated. Both had a strong work ethic. Both had keen scientific minds. What the Wright brothers’ team had that Langley did wasn’t luck. It was inspiration. One was motivated by the prospect of fame and wealth, the other by a belief. The Wright brothers excited the human spirit of those around them. Langley paid for talent to help him get rich and famous. The Wright brothers started with WHY. Further proof Langley was motivated by WHAT, a few days after Orville and Wilbur took flight, Langley quit. He got out of the business. He could have said, “That’s amazing, now I’m going to improve upon their technology.” But he didn’t. He found the defeat humiliating—his own test flight had landed in the Potomac River, and the newspapers all made fun of him. He cared so much about what others thought of him, he was so preoccupied with becoming famous. He wasn’t first, so he simply quit.

Innovation Happens at the Edges

Dream teams are not always so dreamy. When a team of experts comes together they often work for themselves and not for the good of the whole. This is what happens when companies feel the need to pay mega-salaries to “get the best talent.” Those people are not necessarily showing up because they believe in your WHY, they are showing up for the money. A classic manipulation. Paying someone a lot of money and asking them to come up with great ideas ensures very little. However, pulling together a team of like-minded people and giving them a cause to pursue ensures a greater sense of teamwork and camaraderie. Langley pulled together a dream team and promised them riches. The Wright brothers inspired a group of people to join them in pursuit of something bigger than each member of the team. Average companies give their people something to work on. In contrast, the most innovative organizations give their people something to work toward.

The role of a leader is not to come up with all the great ideas. The role of a leader is to create an environment in which great ideas can happen. It is the people inside the company, those on the front lines, who are best qualified to find new ways of doing things. The people who answer the phones and talk to customers, for example, can tell you more about the kinds of questions they get than can anyone sitting in an executive suite miles away. If the people inside a company are told to come to work and just do their job, that’s all they will do. If they are constantly reminded WHY the company was founded and told to always look for ways to bring that cause to life while performing their job, however, then they will do more than their job.

Steve Jobs, for example, did not personally come up with the iPod or iTunes or the iPhone. Others inside the company did. Jobs gave people a filter, a context, a higher purpose around which to innovate: find existing status-quo industries, those in which companies fight to protect their old-fashioned business models, and challenge them. This is WHY Apple was founded, it is what Jobs and Wozniak did when they started the company, and it is what Apple’s people and products have done ever since. It’s a repeating pattern. Apple’s employees simply look for ways to bring their cause to life in as many places as they can. And it works.

It is not the same at many other companies. Companies that define themselves by WHAT they do instead of WHY they do it instruct their people to be innovative around a product or service. “Make it better,” they are instructed. Those who work for Apple’s competitors, companies that have defined themselves as “computer manufacturers,” come to work to develop “more innovative” computers. The best they can do is add more RAM, add a feature or two, or, as one PC maker has done, give people the option to customize the color of their computer casing. This hardly qualifies as an idea with the potential to change the course of an industry. A nice feature, for sure, but not innovation. If you are curious as to how Colgate finds itself with thirty-two different types of toothpaste today, it is because every day its people come to work to develop a better toothpaste and not, for example, to look for ways to help people feel more confident about themselves.

Apple does not have a lock on good ideas; there are smart, innovative thinkers at most companies. But great companies give their people a purpose or challenge around which to develop ideas rather than simply instruct them to make a better mousetrap. Companies that study their competitors in hopes of adding the features and benefits that will make their products “better” are only working to entrench the company in WHAT it does. Companies with a clear sense of WHY tend to ignore their competition, whereas those with a fuzzy sense of WHY are obsessed with what others are doing.

The ability of a company to innovate is not just useful for developing new ideas, it is invaluable for navigating struggle. When people come to work with a higher sense of purpose, they find it easier to weather hard times or even to find opportunity in those hard times. People who come to work with a clear sense of WHY are less prone to giving up after a few failures because they understand the higher cause. Thomas Edison, a man definitely driven by a higher cause, said, “I didn’t find a way to make a lightbulb, I found a thousand ways how not to make one.” Southwest Airlines is famous for pioneering the ten-minute turnaround—the ability to deplane, prep, and board a plane in ten minutes. This ability helps an airline make more money, because the more the planes are in the sky, the better the company is doing. What few people realize is that this innovation was born out of struggle. In 1971, Southwest was running low on cash and needed to sell one of their aircraft to stay in business. This left them with three planes to fly a schedule that required four. They had two choices: they could scale back their operations, or they could figure out how to turn their planes around in ten minutes. And thus was born the ten-minute turnaround.

Whereas most other airline employees would have simply said it couldn’t be done, Southwest’s people rallied to figure out how to perform the unprecedented and seemingly impossible task. Today, their innovation is still paying dividends. Because of increased airport congestion and larger planes and cargo loads, Southwest now takes about twenty-five minutes to turn their planes around. However, if they were to try to keep the same schedule but add even five minutes to the turnaround time, they would need an additional eighteen planes in their fleet at a cost of nearly a billion dollars.

Southwest’s remarkable ability to solve problems, Apple’s remarkable knack for innovation and the Wright brothers’ ability to develop a technology with the team they had were all possible for the same reason: they believed they could and they trusted their people to do it.

The Definition of Trust

Founded by Sir Francis Baring in 1762, Barings Bank was the oldest merchant bank in England. The bank, which survived the Napoleonic Wars, World War I and World War II, was unable to survive the predilection for risk of one self-proclaimed rogue trader. Nick Leeson single-handedly brought down Barings Bank in 1995 by performing some unauthorized, extremely high-risk trades. Had the proverbial winds continued to blow in the right direction, Leeson would have made himself and the bank extremely rich and he would have been hailed as a hero.

But such is the nature of unpredictable things like the weather and financial markets. Few dispute that what Leeson was doing was anything more than gambling. And gambling is very different from calculated risk. Calculated risk accepts that there can be great loses, but steps are taken to either guard against or respond to an unlikely but possible outcome. Even though an emergency landing on water is “unlikely,” as the airlines tell us, they still provide us lifejackets. And if only for peace of mind, we’re glad they do. To do otherwise is a gamble few airlines would be willing to take, even though the actuarial tables are heavily weighted on their side.

Leeson strangely held two positions at Barings, ostensibly serving as both a trader and his own supervisor, but that fact is not interesting given the subject matter. That one man had such a tolerance for risk that he could create so much damage is not very interesting either. Both of those are short-term factors. Both would have ended if Leeson had either left the company or changed jobs, or if Barings had assigned a new supervisor to oversee his operations. What is more interesting is the culture at the bank that could allow these conditions to exist in the first place. Barings had lost its WHY.

The culture at Barings was no longer one in which people came to work inspired. Motivated, yes, but not inspired. Manipulated by the promise of massive payouts for performance, for sure, but not inspired to work in the best interest of the whole. As Leeson reported in his own account of how he got away with such risky behavior for so long, he said it was not that others didn’t recognize that what he was doing was potentially dangerous. It was worse than that. There was a stigma against speaking out. “People at the London end of Barings,” Leeson explained, “were all so know-all that nobody dared ask a stupid question in case they looked silly in front of everyone else.” The lack of a clear set of values and beliefs, along with the weak culture that resulted, created the conditions for an every-man-for-himself environment, the long-term impact of which could yield little else than disaster. This is caveman stuff. If the people aren’t looking out for the community, then the benefits of a community erode. Many companies have star employees and star salesmen and so on, but few have a culture that produces great people as a rule and not an exception.

Trust is a remarkable thing. Trust allows us to rely on others. We rely on those we trust for advice to help us make decisions. Trust is the bedrock for the advancement of our own lives, our families, our companies, our societies and our species. We trust those in our community to care for our children so we can go out to dinner. Given the choice between two babysitters, we’re more likely to trust a babysitter with a little experience from the neighborhood than one with lots of experience from far away. We wouldn’t trust someone from the outside because we don’t know anything about them, we say. The reality is, we don’t know anything about the local babysitter either, beyond the fact that she’s from the neighborhood. In this case, we trust familiarity over experience with something quite important—the safety of our children. We trust that someone who lives in the community and more likely shares our values and beliefs is better qualified to care for the most valuable thing in our lives over someone with a long résumé but from an unfamiliar place. That’s pretty remarkable. It causes some pause when we consider how we hire people: what’s more important, their résumé and experience, or whether they will fit our community? Our children are probably more important than the position we want to fill at the organization, yet we seem to exercise a very different standard. Is there a false assumption at play here as to who makes the best employee?

Historically, trust has played a bigger role in advancing companies and societies than skill set alone. Like the couple leaving their children while they go out on a date for the evening, groups from within a society would go off with confidence, knowing that their homes and families would be safe upon their return. If there were no trust, then no one would take risks. No risks would mean no exploration, no experimentation and no advancement of the society as a whole. That’s a remarkable concept: only when individuals can trust the culture or organization will they take personal risks in order to advance that culture or organization as a whole. For no other reason than, in the end, it’s good for their own personal health and survival.

No matter how experienced, no matter how proficient, a trapeze artist will not attempt a totally new death-defying leap without first trying it with a net below him. And depending on how death-defying the trick is, he may insist on always having a net when performing the trick. Besides its obvious advantage of catching you if you fall, the net also provides a psychological benefit. Knowing it is there gives the trapeze artist the confidence to try something he’s never done before, or to do it again and again. Remove the net and he will only do the safe tricks, the ones he knows he can land. The more he trusts the quality of the net, the more he will take personal risks to make his act better. The trust the circus management gives him by providing him a net is probably afforded to other performers too. Soon all the performers will feel confident to try new things and push themselves further. That collection of personal confidence and personal risk results in the entire circus putting on a much better show. An overall better show means more customers. And the system thrives. But not without trust. For those within a community, or an organization, they must trust that their leaders provide a net—practical or emotional. With that feeling of support, those in the organization are more likely to put in extra effort that ultimately benefits the group as a whole.

I will admit that there are always those who will take the risk, for the first time or repeatedly, without the net. There will always be those who will explore regardless of who is home holding down the fort. These people sometimes earn their rightful spots as the innovators. The ones who pushed further, the ones who did things no one else would do. Some of them may advance a business or even society. And some of them end up dead before they achieve anything.

There is big a difference between jumping out of a plane with a parachute on and jumping without one. Both produce extraordinary experiences, but only one increases the likelihood of being able to try again another time. A trapeze artist with a personality predisposed to taking extraordinary risks without a net may be the star attraction in an otherwise mediocre show. But if he dies or leaves for another circus, then what? This is the paradigm in which someone is motivated by self-gain regardless of the consequences or the benefits to the organization for which he or she works. In such a case, the effort may be good for the individual and it may be good for the group, but the benefits, especially for the group, come with a time limit. Over time, this system will break down, often to the detriment of the organization. Developing trust to encourage people other than those with a predilection for risk, like Nick Leeson, is a better long-term strategy.

Great organizations become great because the people inside the organization feel protected. The strong sense of culture creates a sense of belonging and acts like a net. People come to work knowing that their bosses, colleagues and the organization as a whole will look out for them. This results in reciprocal behavior. Individual decisions, efforts and behaviors that support, benefit and protect the long-term interest of the organization as a whole.

Southwest Airlines, a company renowned for its customer focus, does not, as a matter of policy, believe the customer is always right. Southwest will not tolerate customers who abuse their staff. They would rather those customers fly on a different airline. It’s a subtle irony that one of the best customer service companies in the country focuses on its employees before its customers. The trust between the management and the employees, not dogma, is what produces the great customer service. It is a prerequisite, then, for someone to trust the culture in which they work to share the values and beliefs of that culture. Without it, that employee, for example, is simply a bad fit and likely to work only for self-gain without consideration for the greater good. But if those inside the organization are a good fit, the opportunity to “go the extra mile,” to explore, to invent, to innovate, to advance and, more importantly, to do so again and again and again, increases dramatically. Only with mutual trust can an organization become great.

Real Trust Comes from the Things You Can’t See

“Rambo 2,” said the voice over Brigadier General Jumper’s radio, referring to him by his call sign. “Your group 180, twenty-five miles, closing fast.”

“Barnyard radar contact,” replied Rambo 2, reporting that he had picked up the enemy group on his own radar. A one-star general, John Jumper was an experienced F-15 pilot with thousands of hours of flight time and over a thousand combat hours. By all measures, he was one of the best. Born in Paris, Texas, he had enjoyed a distinguished career. He’d flown just about everything the U.S. Air Force had, from cargo planes to fighter jets. Decorated and distinguished, the commander of his own combat wing, he was the embodiment of what it meant to be a fighter pilot. Smart and confident.

But on that day, Jumper’s reaction didn’t match the situation he faced. By twenty-five miles, he would have been expected to fire his weapons or take some other offensive movement. Fearing that Jumper was locked onto the wrong contact on his radar, Captain Lori Robinson calmly repeated what she could see from miles away: “Rambo 2 confirm radar contact YOUR group now 190 twenty miles.”

As the air weapons controller who was watching the action on her radar screen from a nearby command-and-control center, it was Lori Robinson’s job to direct the pilot toward enemy aircraft so that he could use his weapons to intercept and destroy them. Unlike an air traffic controller, whose job it is to keep air traffic apart, the weapons controller has to bring the planes closer together. From the vantage point of the radar screen, only the weapons controller has the big picture, as the pilot’s onboard navigation system shows only what’s directly in front of the aircraft.

Captain Robinson saw her job as something bigger, however, than just staring at radar, something more profound than just being the eyes and ears for the pilots who were hurtling into harm’s way at 1,500 mph. Captain Robinson knew WHY her job was important. She saw herself as responsible for clearing a path for the pilots in her care so that they could do what they needed to do, so they could push themselves and their aircraft further with greater confidence. And for this reason, she was unusually good at her job. Robinson couldn’t make mistakes. If she did, she would lose the trust of her pilots and, worse, they would lose trust in themselves. You see, it’s confidence that makes fighter pilots so good at their jobs.

And then it happened. Captain Robinson could tell from the calm of Jumper’s voice over the radio that he was unaware of the threat coming at him. On a cloudless day, 20,000 feet over the desert, the alarm screeched in Rambo 2’s $25 million, state-of-the-art fighter jet. He looked up from his radar screen and saw the enemy engaging him. “BREAK RIGHT! BREAK RIGHT!” he screamed into his radio. On October 9, 1988, Brigadier General John P. Jumper was killed.

Captain Robinson waited. There was an eerie calm. Before too long, Jumper stormed into the debriefing room at Nellis Air Force Base. “You got me killed!” he barked at Captain Robinson. Situated in the Nevada desert, Nellis is home to the Air Force Fighter Weapons School, and on that day, General John Jumper took a direct hit from a simulated missile from another U.S. Air Force jet playing the part of an enemy combatant.

“Sir, it was not my fault,” Captain Robinson replied calmly. “Check the video. You’ll see.” General Jumper, then the 57th Wing commander, a graduate of the USAF Fighter Weapons School, and a former instructor at Nellis, routinely evaluated every detail of every training mission he flew. Pilots often relied on the video to learn from their exercises. The video didn’t lie. And it didn’t on that day either. It revealed that the error was indeed his, not Captain Robinson’s. It was a classic blunder. He had forgotten he was part of a team. He had forgotten that what made him so good at his job was not just his ability. Jumper was one of the best because there were others who were looking out for him. A massive infrastructure of people he couldn’t see.

Without question General Jumper had been given the best equipment, the best technology and the best training that money could buy. But it was the mechanics, the teachers, his fellow pilots, the culture of the Air Force and Captain Robinson who ensured that he could trust himself to get the job done. General Jumper forgot WHY he was so good and made a split-second decision that cost him his life. But this is what training is for, to learn these lessons.

Some sixteen years after his lesson over the Nevada desert, General Jumper went on to big things. Now a retired four-star general, he served as chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force from 2001 to 2005, the highest-ranking uniformed office in the entire Air Force, responsible for the organization, training and equipping of nearly 700,000 active-duty, guard, reserve and civilian forces serving in the United States and overseas. As a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he, along with the other service chiefs, advised the secretary of defense, the National Security Council and the president.

This is not, however, a story about General Jumper. It is a story about Lori Robinson. Now herself a brigadier general in the Air Force, she no longer has her face down a scope. There are no more bogeys and bandits, the Air Force’s nicknames for the good guys and the bad guys, in her life. Even though her job has changed, General Robinson still starts every day by reminding herself WHY she came to work.

As much as she misses “her kids,” as she called those who served under her command, General Robinson is still looking for ways she can clear a path for others so that they can push themselves and the organization further. “The time to think of yourself is done, it is not about you, it is about the lieutenants behind you,” she’d remind her students when she was an instructor at the Fighter Weapons School. “If enough of us do this,” she goes on, referring to WHY she does what she does, “then we leave this military and this country in better shape than we found it. And isn’t that the point?” And it is that sense of purpose, a clear idea of WHY she comes to work, that has been the cornerstone of General Robinson’s success. And that, incidentally, has been remarkable.

Working hard to clear a path for others so that they can confidently go on to do bigger and better things has in turn inspired others to clear a path for General Robinson to do exactly the same thing. As a woman in the very masculine world of the military, she sets an example for how to lead. Great leadership is not about flexing and intimidation; great leaders, as General Robinson proves, lead with WHY. They embody a sense of purpose that inspires those around them.

General Robinson was so trusted as a weapons controller that it was not unusual for pilots in training to request that she be assigned to them. “The greatest compliment I ever got was when people would say, ‘When I go to war, I want Lori on the radio,’” she says. She is the first woman in the history of the Air Force to command the 552nd Air Control Wing out of Tinker Air Force Base, one of the largest wings in Air Combat Command (the wing that flies the AWACS airborne control aircraft—the fleet of Boeing 707s with the huge rotating radar dishes on top). She is the first commander of a combat wing ever who didn’t come up through the pilot ranks. She was the first female Weapons School instructor to teach at the Air Force Fighter Weapons School, where the Air Force trains all its top guns. There, she became the most celebrated teacher in the ranks—winning best teacher seven classes in a row. She is the first female director of the Secretary of the Air Force and Chief of Staff of the Air Force Executive Action Group. In 2000, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said of General Robinson, at the time still a captain, that she singularly influenced his ideas on airpower. And the list goes on.

By any measure, General Lori Robinson is a remarkable leader. Some in management positions operate as if they are in a tree of monkeys. They make sure that everyone at the top of the tree looking down sees only smiles. But all too often, those at the bottom looking up see only asses. Great leaders like General Robinson are respected by those both above and below. Those in her command trust her implicitly because they know she’s committed to looking after them. “There’s nothing you can do that I can’t fix,” she was often heard telling students at Fighter Weapons School. And those to whom she reports show remarkable deference to her. “I don’t know how she gets away with half the stuff she does,” say those who know her. More importantly, it is said with a grin and with respect. General Robinson’s ability to lead developed not because she’s the smartest or the nicest. She’s a great leader because she understands that earning the trust of an organization doesn’t come from setting out to impress everyone, it comes from setting out to serve those who serve her. It is the invisible trust that gives a leader the following they need to get things done. And in Lori Robinson’s case, things get done.

I use the military because it exaggerates the point. Trust matters. Trust comes from being a part of a culture or organization with a common set of values and beliefs. Trust is maintained when the values and beliefs are actively managed. If companies do not actively work to keep their Golden Circle in balance—clarity, discipline and consistency—then trust starts to break down. A company, indeed any organization, must work actively to remind everyone WHY the company exists. WHY it was founded in the first place. What it believes. They need to hold everyone in the company accountable to the values and guiding principles. It’s not enough to just write them on the wall—that’s passive. Bonuses and incentives must revolve around them. The company must serve those whom they wish to serve it.

With balance, those who are good fits can trust that everyone is on board for the same reasons. It’s also the only way that each individual in the system can trust that others are acting to “leave the organization in a better way than we found it,” to quote General Robinson again. This is the root of passion. Passion comes from feeling like you are a part of something that you believe in, something bigger than yourself. If people do not trust that a company is organized to advance the WHY, then the passion is diluted. Without managed trust, people will show up to do their jobs and they will worry primarily about themselves. This is the root of office politics—people acting within the system for self-gain often at the expense of others, even the company. If a company doesn’t manage trust, then those working for it will not trust the company, and self-interest becomes the overwhelming motivation. This may be good for the short term, but over time the organization will get weaker and weaker.

Herb Kelleher, the visionary behind Southwest Airlines, understood this better than most. He recognized that to get the best out his employees he needed to create an environment in which they felt like the company cared about them. He knew that they would naturally excel if they felt the work they did made a difference. When a journalist asked Kelleher who comes first to him, his shareholders or his employees, his response was heresy at the time (and to a large degree still is). “Well, that’s easy,” he said, “employees come first and if employees are treated right, they treat the outside world right, the outside world uses the company’s product again, and that makes the shareholders happy. That really is the way that it works and it’s not a conundrum at all.” The Influence of Others

Whom do you trust more, someone you know or someone you don’t know? What do you trust more, a claim made in a piece of advertising or a recommendation from a friend? Whom do you trust more, the waiter who tells you, “Everything on the menu is great,” or the waiter who tells you to avoid the chicken casserole? Are these questions too easy? Then how about this one: why should anyone trust you?

Personal recommendations go a long way. We trust the judgment of others. It’s part of the fabric of strong cultures. But we don’t trust the judgment of just anyone. We are more likely to trust those who share our values and beliefs. When we believe someone has our best interest in mind because it is in their benefit to do so, the whole group benefits. The advancements of societies were based a great deal on the trust between those with a common set of values and beliefs.

The feeling of trust is lodged squarely in the same place as the WHY—the limbic brain—and it’s often powerful enough to trump empirical research, or at least seed doubt. This is the reason why so many manipulations are effective; we believe that, for better or worse, others know more than we do. Clearly, four out of five dentists know more than us when choosing chewing gum (but what about the one holdout . . . what did he know that the others didn’t?). Of course we trust the celebrity endorsement. Those celebs are rich and can use any product they want. It must be good if they are putting their reputation on the line to promote it, right?

You probably answered that question in your head already. Clearly they are endorsing the product because they are getting paid to. But if celebrity endorsements didn’t work, companies wouldn’t use them. Or perhaps it’s the fear that they “might” work that fuels the million-dollar wink and a smile that encourages us to choose one car over another or one lipstick over another. The fact is, none of us is immune to the effect of someone we know or feel like we trust influencing our decisions.

Celebrity endorsements are used with this concept in mind. By using a recognizable face or name, so the assumption goes, people will more likely trust the claims being made. The flaw in this assumption is that celebrity status alone may work to influence behavior, but at this level it’s just peer pressure. For it to work, the celebrity needs to represent some clear cause or belief. An athlete known for her work ethic may have some value to a company with the same belief, for example. Or an actor known for his charitable work would be good fit for a company known for doing good. In these cases, it is clear that both the company and the celebrity are working together to advance the same cause. I recently saw an ad for TD Ameritrade that featured morning show hosts Regis Philbin and Kelly Ripa. I’m still trying to figure out the cause that two talk show hosts represent and how that matters when it comes to choosing one bank over another. When a company says that a celebrity represents “the kind of qualities we want our customers to associate with us,” they miss the point. The celebrity is another WHAT to the company’s WHY. The celebrity must embody the qualities that already exist at the company. Without clarity of WHY first, any benefit will amount to simply increasing recognition.

So many decisions (and indeed contract negotiations) are based on an advertising industry measurement called a Q-score—a quotient of how well recognized a celebrity is, how famous they are, so to speak. The higher the score, the better the unaided awareness of the celebrity. This information alone is not enough. The clearer the spokesperson’s own WHY is understood, the better ambassador they can be for a like-minded brand or company. But there is no measurement of a celebrity’s WHY currently available, so the result is obvious. The value of too many celebrity endorsements is the celebrity appeal alone. Unless the audience to which you are trying to appeal gets a sense of what that spokesperson believes, unless that spokesperson is “one of us,” the enforcement may drive recognition, it may even drive sales for the short term, but it will fail to build trust.

A trusted recommendation is powerful enough to trump facts and figures and even multimillion-dollar marketing budgets. Think of the young father who wants to do everything right for his newborn child. He decides he’s going to get a new car—something safe, something to protect his child. He spends a week reading all the magazines and reports, he’s seen all the advertising and decides that on Saturday he’s buying a Volvo. The facts are in and his mind is made up. Friday night he and his wife head to a dinner party. Standing by the punch bowl is their friend the local car enthusiast. Our intrepid new father walks up to his friend and proudly announces that, as a new father, he’s decided to buy a Volvo. Without a thought his friend replies, “Why would you do that? Mercedes is the safest car on the road. If you care about your kid, you’ll get a Mercedes.” Playing on his desires to be a good father, but also trusting his friend’s opinion, one of three things will happen. Our young father will either change his mind and buy a Mercedes; he will go forward with his original decision, but not without some doubt about whether he’s indeed doing the right thing; or he will go back to the drawing board to redo all his research in order to reassure himself of his decision. No matter how much rational information he has at his fingertips, unless that decision also feels right, stress will go up and confidence will go down. However you slice it, the opinions of others matter. And the opinions of those we trust matter most.

The question isn’t how should car companies talk to the father who bought the car. The question isn’t even how they court the highly influential opinion of his friend, the car guy. The concept of buyer and influencers isn’t a new one. The question is, how do you get enough of the influencers to talk about you so that you can make the system tip?