A Merry Christmas and A Note to Leaders

A Christmas Carol -Open Book

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is to watch a Christmas Carol (  read about the novella ) by Charles Dickens.  I watch this maybe three four times a year and I think it is a great novella overall.  It gives the protagonist, Ebenezer Scrooge, a mirror into his own soul. As companies operate in and through tough times, it is important that you-as company leadership- never forget about the communities in which your business exists and that there are people struggling at this time of the year. This can be the hardest time of year because the contrast can be large and it is inescapable  between the people that have and those that do not.

The immediate community you need to deal with is that of your employees and you need to lead from the top. As an executive, be hands on, as a leader of the team you need to be a part of the team every day. If you find yourself in an “Ivory tower” you have work to do and maybe get started today.  Empower your employees not only at this time of year, but also all year long.  If you decorate your office at this time of the year, participate in putting up the decorations.

If you have holiday parties, and you “Should” be having a holiday party, develop a corporate culture of giving and helping the local community, this should be your second concern. Help your community by donating time or taking up collections for local food banks. If you do not have a holiday party tradition-start with this and immediately arrange a holiday party.

Most companies find their next concern to be customers and this links to product and product quality. If you have created your product only for love of money than you have a problem that needs to be dealt with immediately. While suitability to task is the customer’s responsibility you as a leader have the responsibility to be honest with your customers and insure that all of your products work as advertised.

Remember leaders, nothing good can come from something bad and outward overt or hidden lies.  Ensure your products work and that your sales team is always unambiguous when describing product or service. Never ever put an employee in a position where they have to choose between keeping their job and lying to a customer. Leading from the top matters here because if you as the executive do not take care of your customers it will stain your company and in the end it will harm you as well.

You next concern should be with your competitors, compete fairly and fairly does not mean that it can be argued that you may be right by law, instead you should be right.  Here some areas to be concerned with:

• Never infringe on a competitors trademark
• Never infringe on a competitors copyright
• Never lie about a competitor’s product or service
• And more, think about it and involve other executives to develop strategies together to focus on your products or services and quality versus being negative

When you lead you set the tone and the tone should be competing with quality and ethics versus bad behavior.

As a leader you get to set the culture of your company.  The culture is essential to your success. Here are a few tips that you might find valuable:

• Make it possible for every employee to be proud of their company and position, make sure everyone contributes to the companies and each other’s success
• Have an ethics clause in employee handbooks and contracts. From the top make it clear that ethical behavior matters when dealing with each other or customers
• Create internal community outreach efforts
• Create and live by your company mission statement and make it pervasive, make sure everyone understands why you are in business and why it matters

The holidays always provide a time for us to reflect on the things for which we are grateful and as leaders we can reflect on our own behavior and goals. We should set lofty goals and then work hard to exceed them. However, if we cannot complete our goals within our company ethics and belief systems breaking the same is not acceptable.

One last note on this Christmas Eve, to those that outsource product development or support,  ask yourself a few questions about outsourcing outside of the USA:

• Do I outsource with the sole goal of paying less for labor or taxes?
• Do I outsource because environmental regulations are more favorable in a different country?
• Does the country I outsource to have equivalent workers’ rights equal to my own countries and or companies beliefs?

If you answered yes to any of these questions you need to rethink your decision to outsource and most likely cease your outsourcing. Remember nothing good can come from unethical behavior or actions, money is not everything and if you cause harm to get your money it is something that will follow you in life.

To be a Leader and to telecommute does not work. Think to yourself, how many great leaders you know inspired you via email. When I think of leadership via remote I think of how it would be to read about a place online but never go to the same place. Can you know something without experiencing it? Yes, while it is possible to do so it is also true that you will never make it your own without personal experience. Creating a company culture remotely just does not work. Your leadership team needs to be in the office and performing their duty of leading and driving your companies vision. Quality of employees and quality of products and/or services are a direct reflection of leadership.

It is never too late to change your organization and it is not hard, it is just a matter of writing down what you need to accomplish as part of your plan and then moving forward with a step-by-step execution of that plan. Remember leaders need to be with their team to lead and one should lead by example.  As a leader I can rifle through a list of leaders that have molded me and together what we accomplished. While I have been successful as a leader, it is important to note, I have never defined success as the size of my paycheck. I have always defined my success on the accomplishments of my teams and the positive impact that we have had on our community and or space in which we did business.  Every person on your team will enjoy this holiday in their own way and what you can do for them now and every day of the year is to give them a position in an ethical company of which they are proud. Your best advocates will always be your employees.

I would like to end this post by wishing everyone a wonderful holiday and a happy new year.

- Rob Yonaitis