NTC Medical Supplies Corporation had been stagnant-sometimes declining-for years. At this year's management retreat, the CEO, Bob, decided that the organization was troubled and he wanted to express his concern and encourage managers to make a turnaround. His message was for managers to "ignite the troops" and "drive business growth." Bob even quoted financial goals for the end of the year. However, the executives seemed to be unresponsive. Bob was not clear about what changes should be made and how they should be implemented. Furthermore, after receiving little feedback from those attending the retreat, Bob discovered that the reason no one showed passion was that the organizational culture discouraged initiative and innovation. Amy. a young executive, shared an experience when her proposal for a new project prompted other managers to disparage her, and ultimately hurt her career. The culture at NTC rewarded status quo and punished innovation.
It was the yearly meeting of the whole global senior management team for the NTC Medical Supplies Corporation. NTC was a high-tech company that produced specialty products for surgical procedures. Every year the management board got together for half a day to discuss next year's upcoming strategy, and then went to play golf for the next three and a half days. Year after year it was the same pattern, where the senior executives treated themselves to royal treatment while the company sailed like the Titanic toward disaster.
This year, however, things were a bit different. The head of the human resources (HR) department realized that the company was on course for disaster, and was working with Bob, the CEO, on how to make changes in the way their company operated. Bob was well aware that business was not where it should be, and he was now committed to pushing his management team to drive business growth at double-digit rates. Their stock value had been flat all throughout the greatest bull market of all time! Something was terribly wrong with this company's picture. Unfortunately, no one knew exactly what Bob meant by "drive business growth," nor were they compelled to do so in any consistent fashion. Bob's top senior management team had become complacent in their past success. One young manager described the situation best: "The furniture and the mindsets around here are both "stuck-in the 1970s."
The retreat started with Bob giving his opening speech, which he had prepared to "ignite the troops." He really tried to be inspiring, but each time he painted a positive picture of what could be, he slid back to complaining about NTC's poor performance, and how they just weren't "growing the business." Bob wanted them to increase NTC's stock value, but was very short on specifics, except to repeat again and again the financial goals for the year. He honestly felt that his job was to clarify the end goal, and the managers' jobs were to make it happen.
By the end of Bob's speech, he had alienated most of the executives in the room, except some very loyal sycophants who kept saying, "You know, Bob has a good point, blah, blah, blah!....."
The group broke for the evening feeling very disillusioned. The next morning a famous leadership guru spoke to them for 3 hours, giving them all sorts of examples about the new "organizational order" out there. Each time he stopped to dialogue with the audience, he got blank stares. He turned on his way out of the room before lunch, and said to Bob under his breath, "They've got no damn passion!"
In the afternoon session, the- group received 36O-degree feedback. The feedback was on their leadership-styles, -- and it is fair to say that for some, the results weren't pretty. Many thought they were much better leaders than they actually were based on follower, peer, and supervisory ratings. This is not an uncommon overestimation in leadership feedback lore. The group started to see they were not the ideal leaders they perceived themselves to be-. The areas they collectively received the worst ratings in were coaching their followers, and in spending too much time on searching for mistakes. Again, the people in the room were not at their most inspired moment, and it is fair to say they had "No damn passion!"
Bob asked to address the audience before they broke for the afternoon. He told them about the comment from the leadership guru that morning, and said, "We must instill passion in each other. Let's seize this opportunity based on our feedback to do things differently. Could the ratings be a wakeup call?" Bob desperately needed the manager's assertiveness, and asked them to stop looking to him for all of the leadership in this company. It was time for them to come to the table. Bob then asked, "Does anyone have anything to say, any feedback at all for me?"
No one moved, so he went to sit down. Just then, the HR director stood up and said, "Now, isn't there anyone here who has an opinion he or she would like to share with Bob? Anyone? He just asked you for feedback."
A young woman by the name of Amy said she would like to address the group. She said that three years ago, when she was at her first senior management retreat, the company's then COO asked her to present a new project initiative. He had really pumped her up to present this new project to the senior management group, but neglected to tell her about the strong resistance in the group to launching the new project. She was the sacrificial lamb and was verbally torn apart by he group. Amy told Bob that she firmly believed that this experience at her first retreat had really hurt her career. Following that meeting, many of the managers referred to her as a lightweight." Amy asked Bob why he didn't come to the table when leadership was needed back then to balance out the damage done to her. She was set up and he knew it.
An older lawyer in the group quickly jumped in and said, "Now Amy, you may be overreacting a bit, and didn't you get that promotion you wanted last year anyhow? Maybe you're being a little too emotional." Essentially, the lawyer was implying that Amy was being a little too "female" in a group of senior managers who were primarily males who played golf together, whether they enjoyed it or not. In actuality, Amy wasn't at all being emotional, but that was the lawyer's limited interpretation. Bob sat listening and then said, "Amy, I am sorry, because it did hurt your career and I should have intervened but didn't. I was in a terrible fight with the COO before he finally left, and chose not to engage him that day. You have a right to be angry with me. I'm sorry. It won't happen again."
At that point, a young manager from Italy spoke up. He said that his general manager had cautioned him before his first senior management meeting "to not say anything interesting, got it, nothing interesting." There was some nervous laughter around the room, and then it appeared that people began to realize the implications of getting 42 managers from the farthest points around the world together for 4 days at the Ritz-Carlton not to say anything interesting. How interesting!