Number 602                   Innovative Leader            Volume 13, Number 6     June 2004

Don’t Oil the Squeaky Wheel
by Wolf J. Rinke, Ph.D.

Dr. Wolf J. Rinke is a management consultant, executive coach and keynote speaker dedicated to helping organizations and individuals maximize their potential (www.WolfRinke.com) .  In addition to his new book Don’t Oil the Squeaky Wheel … and 19 Other Contrarian Ways to Improve Your Leadership Effectiveness (McGraw-Hill, 2004), he is the author of several other best-selling books including Winning Management:  6 Fail-Safe Strategies for Building High-Performance Organizations.

Knowledge is power. We’ve all heard that statement before and I’m sure many of you agree with it.  But, I don’t!

The managers I work with--those who know how to lead people--always startle me. They’ve got it all together. They have the knowledge.  They can talk a great game.  But, when I watch what they actually do, I find that their actions aren’t based on their knowledge; they’re based on what has worked for them in the past. 

All the knowledge in the world won’t do you any good unless you do something with it.  You see, it’s not what you know that makes a difference, it’s what you do, and what you apply, apply over and over again until it causes you to transform new knowledge into a new auto-pilot response pattern.

Just look at what’s happening in business today--from corporate greed to downsizing to employee distrust.  Unless managers challenge the norm--and change the ineffective practices they are comfortable with--these issues will continue to plague the workplace.  As they say, “If you do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you’ve always gotten.”

Let’s just take a closer look at a few of these issues. And let me offer some unorthodox, counter-intuitive strategies you should exploit to overcome them, and lead your organization to ethical peak performance. 

Issue:  Overworked and overstressed managers.

Strategy:  Don’t oil the squeaky wheel.  If you spent more than 5% of your time with troublemakers, you are messing up.

Here’s a real story:  Janice, CEO of a mortgage company, was having problems. Sales were down --- and that was during the low-interest go-go years were all of her competitors were not just thriving. Employee morale was shot. Her VPs were outright depressed. To turn things around, she started spending more time with her people --- visiting branches, establishing an open door policy, making herself available to listen to people in small group meetings. She even set up a weekly “have breakfast with the boss.”

After starting these sessions, Janice told me that all she heard was whining, blaming and complaining. When I asked Janice what she did with the information she said: I let people vent, listen very actively and try to be empathetic. And sometimes I talk to the other party to attempt to get the facts. And that is pretty much it, she said.

The problem, I told Janet, is that she is getting what she is rewarding.  She has been “rewarding” people for doing exactly the things she didn’t want: whining, blaming and complaining.

I then asked her how much time she had been spending with her high performing VPs and sales people. Very little. Because these are her good people, she felt they didn’t have time to whine, blame and complain. In fact, Janice indicated that since she started listening to the whiners --- who were complaining about how overworked and underpaid they are --- she had been transferring more and more responsibilities to her top performers.

Janet’s whole plan backfired.  She had been rewarding her troublemakers by giving them a lot of her valuable time. Not only did she fail to hold them accountable, they just saw her as a way to unload their worries, complain about their co-workers and get further rewarded by having more and more work taken away from them. And what did she do with her top performers? She not only ignored them; she punished them. First by shifting more responsibilities and work to them. And second, by ignoring them.

If you want your team members to be positive, trusting, turned on, and tuned in, then you must spend the majority of your time with the people who behave that way, and while they are doing it, help you succeed faster.

Issue:  Pervasive unethical conduct by corporate executives and corporate greed.

Strategy:  Don't play to win.  While it should seem obvious--it’s not.  Playing to win at any price is bad business over the long term. Especially since many companies are creating an unethical culture. For example, 44% of all non-management employees who observe ethical misconduct at work, such as abusive or intimidating behavior toward employees or lying to employees customers, vendors or the public do not report such misconduct because they belief that no corrective action will be taken or they fear that their report would not be kept confidential. In addition, fewer than three in five employees who did report misconduct said that they were satisfied with the organization’s response.

The 2003 survey of 1,500 employees, conducted by the not-for-profit Ethics Resource Center in Washington, DC, further reported that although there has been the first overall drop in misconduct seen in a decade, workers feel increased pressure --- more than twice as great --- to compromise ethics standards at times of mergers, acquisitions and restructuring. And that workers and managers under the age of 30 are far less likely to report misconduct, with only 43% reporting such conduct compared to 69% for all employees. Similarly 21% of younger managers with low tenure are about twice as likely to compromise ethics standards than their older counterparts.

Issue:  High levels of fear coupled with low levels of employee satisfaction (toxic workplaces):

Strategy:  Don’t have people work for you.  All of us work for only one person--ourselves. Perhaps the most powerful leadership strategy of all times is to treat all employees as if they are volunteers.  Doing so will eliminate fear in the workplace and achieve dramatic improvements in employee satisfaction.

Stop and think --- what would you say to your team members if indeed they were volunteers? How about: Please. Thank you! Can I count on you? I need your help. I really appreciate what you’ve done. Thanks for being on my team! And now the one that blows the autocratic managers away: Could you do me a favor? That one, I can tell you, just doesn’t sit well with many managers.  Their typical response is:  What are you talking about? They’re not doing you any favor, it’s their job.  A good argument--yet, 100% incorrect. The fastest way to achieve peak performance is to treat all employees as if they are volunteers.

Putting it all together

If these three issues can be overcome by going against conventional wisdom--by changing strategies that may have worked in the past--just imagine what you can do if you look at your organization’s overall leadership practices with an unorthodox eye.  You’ll motivate team members to achieve extra-ordinary results; eliminate fear, stress and conflict; and achieve dramatic improvements in employee satisfaction, performance and productivity.  Do I sense a light bulb going off?