Are You Doing Your Best Work?
Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it, nothing great was ever achieved.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
At 25, I gave my notice and walked away from a stable, well-paying job. What was I thinking?
It was 1982, and I was working as a branch manager for Texas Instruments. After four years and a series of promotions, I was comfortable in my role as a female director in a male-dominated industry. We were working on commercial digital hardware using silicon transistors and integrated circuits. I received a promotion every 6 months. As an industrial engineer, it was an ideal situation. But, I began to notice a shift in the company.
Several well-regarded managers were leaving the business. Word got around that there was a new venture starting by the name of “Gateway.” Without warning, I saw a number of my firm’s brightest and most driven colleagues leave their jobs for the new enterprise. These were all people I admired a great deal.
And it didn’t stop. So many people left their jobs at Texas Instruments that the company filed a lawsuit against the new venture for poaching its employees. The tension was rising. What could drive my colleagues to give up their job security at Texas Instruments?
It was time to investigate.
Everyone leaving had been involved with the business of manufacturing hard drives, so we all assumed the new company focused on electronics—we made lots of guesses, but no one knew. Whatever it was, the management of the new business couldn’t let me in on the secret because of the lawsuit. But while their mouths remained shut, their arms opened wide.
Without disclosing what I’d be doing, the new venture welcomed me onto the team. “I don’t think I can do this job,” I told the hiring managers, unsure if my qualifications would be adequate. They smiled, shook their heads, assured me that I could handle it, and ushered me into my new future. Little did I know the venture I had just joined would go on to become Compaq Computer—a corporation that would set a new precedent as the fastest growing company America had ever seen. (You might ask, what happened to the name Gateway? They changed their name to Compaq just prior to launching the first product.)
Yet my decision to join the new venture wasn’t tied to any technological innovation. Because no products had been launched, I assumed I would now be spending my days supporting the design and manufacture of hard drives. But this wasn’t the deciding factor. I decided I wanted a piece of the action because of the people who were joining the new firm.
In addition to pioneering the portable computer, the company was founded with the goal of creating a business environment that offered a wonderful place to work in. Our products were only one variable in the equation. There was vibrancy in our day-to-day operations that transcended any professional team to which I had previously belonged. Everyone who came to work wanted to be there, and it showed.
Garnering massive growth in our first year—over $100 million in sales—we became an indomitable team of intrapreneurs. We collaborated on everything, running into every imaginable problem, and tackling each one with the same eagerness and fortitude. There was an explicit awareness of cause and effect. The impact of every individual contribution, or lack thereof, was felt by all.
While this high-performing environment combined with an enviable product/market opportunity allowed the company to expand rapidly, it also encouraged its workers to grow in parallel. I was able to push myself further than ever before with my new found autonomy. I learned that solving technical problems was not difficult. In reality, building healthy interpersonal relations was more challenging, and it took work. This came as a surprise—nothing in my past had prepared me for the realization that how people worked mattered as much as what they did. Not only that, but I learned that to be a true superstar as a leader, you had to excel in both areas: solving technical problems and leading people with compassion and understanding.
About 14 years later, the company had achieved monolithic proportions. We’d grown to 17,000 employees worldwide and grossed $15 billion in annual revenue. But something had changed.
We had begun to hire people who were joining the company for little more than our benefits. At first, we settled for this only occasionally when the need to fill a seat was overwhelming. But it began to occur more and more frequently. The people coming on board weren’t bad people, just motivated to achieve different goals than those of our original team.
This difference in personnel diluted the single-minded passion and drive we once enjoyed. An old professional dynamic began to show its face; office politics grew rampant. Taking stock of the climate, I decided it was time to leave.
I got my next job consulting for a company in San Francisco. Inexperienced, yet ambitious, I flew out to the Bay Area and, shortly, thereafter, met my husband. We partnered to form Oneteam Consulting, the firm I now lead. Fast forward 20 years, and here I am writing a book about what I’ve learned while advising CEOs and their senior leadership teams on how to uncover their organization’s potential.
But those two decades were crucial. I encountered organizations struggling with inconsistencies in leadership, operations, workplace culture, and every other facet of a business. And while each of my clients dealt with constricted growth in unique circumstances, the fundamental roadblock was always the same.
Every one of these organizations was experiencing misaligned internal and external strategies.
By this, I mean that what was happening within the company was affecting its overall growth. Its level of performance was being unintentionally dumbed down. Sounds obvious, right? The issues themselves were never devilishly complex—recognizing them was half the battle.
Here are a couple of telling examples.
Imagine an organization focused on increased sales. They’re directing all their attention and resources toward their customer base, and their marketing department is finding explosive success in gaining people’s attention. But what happens when they bite off more than they can chew?
Their external strategy may involve gathering a large pool of sales, but internally, they may not have the workforce or systems to deliver on their promises. Now they run the risk of disappointing customers and losing future sales, a move that may be fatal. It’s this discrepancy between what they’ve agreed to on the outside versus what they’re capable of on the inside that will impede progress.
Next, picture an organization that is reactive. One quarter they’re focused on propping up sales, next they’re focused on hiring, and next, they concentrate on ramping up their marketing. Their internal processes allow no room for juggling all of the different activities a successful business needs to survive. This dysfunction creates a haphazard and lopsided external strategy. They constantly have one department outpacing the others. As a result, their customers begin experiencing the organization as unreliable.
There is no substitute for a solid fit between product and market. But understand here that a superior product/market fit isn’t enough. If an organization’s internal operations prevent it from operating successfully, it won’t matter how brilliant its product or business model may be. A dumbed-down input ensures a dumbed-down output.
Now, let’s take a look at the big picture. Managing a company amidst evolving industries, innovative competitors, and unprecedented customer demands can cause enough worry. But many business leaders fail to understand that misaligned internal and external strategies create additional problems for them and the organization they lead. A CEO can wind up shooting himself (or herself) in the foot—scrambling to react to issues he (or she) could have, and should have, foreseen.
I often describe my work as “helping businesses realize their potential.” As you look to the future, it’s always best to optimize your current operations. Not only does this reinforce the strengths you already have, but it also allows for bigger and better long-term rewards.
A useful metaphor for this occurs in real estate. As a developer, your goal is to create the highest and best use of the property on which you work. You want to optimize every element of design you can to appease regulations, while ensuring your investment is as profitable as possible.
Similarly, what is your organization’s potential? You want to optimize your productivity, profitability, and feasibility. You want to make sure that they are aligned with you and those with whom you’re working. What’s more, you want to make success sustainable.
It’s important to understand that the strategies I reveal here have less to do with creating growth, and more to do with supporting growth. An organization’s success will always come from its product/market fit, or how successfully it is serving its market. What I’m offering, however, are methodologies for unearthing your capabilities and minimizing your blind spots, allowing you to serve your market in an improved way.
What do you see when all these stars are aligned? Cohesive teamwork. Enthusiastic workers. Explicit communication. Collaborative decision making. A bias for the right actions at the right times. Your whole organization should be functioning as a high-performance unit.
These group dynamics were fundamental to my time at Compaq. I will never forget the experience of working in such an exciting and high-energy environment. Many of you reading this have experienced this yourself, and most of us have tried to duplicate it again and again. It’s hard, I know. But I can show you how to get there.
And this goes for organizations at all levels of success. While I believe there’s always room to refine strategies, this book doesn’t serve only companies that are struggling. These strategies apply to a whole spectrum of circumstances.
Maybe you feel you’re already operating at full capacity. Perhaps your organization is doing well, but you know it can do better. What if your board says you’ve had a great year, but there’s room for improvement and you’re not quite sure how to get there? Maybe your organization is outpacing its capacity. Or perhaps new people have joined the leadership team. Times of transition can always greatly benefit from closely aligned strategies. If you find yourself in any of these situations, this is a perfect time to assess your internal and external alignment in order to avoid any fatal mistakes.
Why stunt your growth with below-average performance? Eradicate any dumbed-down strategies to lead your organization to its full potential.