“We both chuckle about it now. The point is, I had perceived the situation in a way that didn’t fit with reality, and when my paradigm suddenly shifted, my behavior shifted too. I went from fuming and snarling to groveling and whimpering. That’s the power of a Paradigm Shift.”
Patrick shares a story about a public-sector leader who practiced a “kiss up, kick down” mentality. He said “yes” to everything his boss said without clarifying expectations and then would force his people to work on projects everyone knew were going nowhere. He had competent, capable people reporting to him, but he wasted their energy rewriting sentences on documents no one would read and building presentations no one would see. His unwillingness to ensure that he knew the desired outcomes of an effort caused his people to stop contributing. They stopped thinking; stopped acting without his specific direction. He had disengaged once-amazing contributors and had no idea his view of things was his downfall.
Paradigms drive practices. For example, if you’re part of a culture that believes in the value of activity over results, you’ll probably spend hours in conference rooms talking about all the work you are doing, but little about the outcomes you actually accomplished. In the end, a paradigm based on a false principle will fail you. Your practices or behaviors will bring you down.
Paradigms drive practices.
Clayton Christensen said, “A culture can be built consciously or evolve inadvertently.”10 Which do you prefer for your team or organization? You can consciously build a culture like the Bakerloo Line, or you can let it devolve into a disengaged team of Toms.
Is your organizational culture working for you or against you? We are inviting you to design your culture deliberately.
How to Effectively Change Behaviors
In many public-sector organizations, the typical approach to changing people’s behavior is to reward or threaten them. This is what Stephen R. Covey called “the great jackass theory of human motivation—carrot and stick.” The problem with this approach is that it treats people like animals, and it works only on the surface and only temporarily. Like Tom, people who are threatened develop a paradigm of fear, so they act out of fear. They will “work” for an organization, but they will never give their heart. They will never speak honestly, contribute freely, or do more than required. They will never, ever tell you what they really think.
They will be motivated all right (motivated to evade responsibility), but they will never be inspired. In today’s workplace, many workers are afraid, and they act like it. They take little initiative, they avoid responsibility, they keep their thoughts to themselves—they bring as little as possible to the table so they won’t get in trouble. This is the legacy of the Industrial Age. You will never capture people’s hearts by treating them like jackasses, but that’s how most managers lead.
You will never capture people’s hearts by treating them like jackasses, but that’s how most managers lead.
The secret to changing behavior is to change paradigms and enact highly effective practices built upon these new ways of thinking. That’s the purpose of this book: to replace unproductive paradigms with inspiring new paradigms and corresponding practices that will unleash new and extraordinarily productive behavior. That’s the job you must do now.
That’s the purpose of this book: to replace unproductive paradigms with inspiring new paradigms and corresponding practices that will unleash new and extraordinarily productive behavior.
The story of the Bakerloo Line proves that this job, while challenging, can be done and that the results are dramatic. We helped this world leader in the Underground commuter transportation reach that ultimate competitive position in the public-sector level, and we can help you too.
Five Key Practices to Success
The common ways of thinking are often reactive and counterproductive. Consider. What kind of leader would you be if…
No one but you felt a sense of responsibility for results?
You didn’t understand the combined power of your team?
You failed to execute your most important goals?
You didn’t fully leverage the genius, talent, and skill of your team?
There was a lack of trust in you, each other, or the organization?
Your internal and external customers had no clear idea what kind of value you brought to them?
There was little loyalty on your team to you, each other, or the organization?
FranklinCovey has over three decades of experience with hundreds of thousands of people in international organizations, small schools, and whole departments of government. They come to us to become highly effective organizations. We have five practices that show them how to do this, but it always begins with changed mindsets—paradigms—that will enable them to thrive. We have shown in this chapter that the first shift is seeing that your people are your ultimate competitive advantage and that you must engage them before you can successfully move forward. To do this, it is not your job to simply be the leader, but to make everyone a leader. Once this shift has occurred, it is time for you to shift your thinking in five key areas:
| Common Practices | Highly Effective Practices |
| Create and post the mission statement in all public areas. | 1. Find the Voice of the organization and connect and align accordingly (a.k.a. Lead With Purpose). |
| Develop a great strategy. | 2. Execute your strategy with excellence. |
| Do more with less. | 3. Unleash and engage people to do infinitely more than you imagined they could. |
| Become the provider/employer of choice in your industry. | 4. Be the most trusted provider/employer in your sector. |
| Satisfy customers. | 5. Create fervent loyalty with customers. |
Why these five practices? Each one is based on fundamental principles that never change. The principles of proactivity, execution, productivity, and trust underlie every great achievement: nothing has ever been accomplished in human history without them. People who live by the opposite values—reactivity, aimless activity, waste, mistrust—contribute little to the success of the organization. Similarly, the principles of mutual benefit and loyalty underlie every successful relationship. People who live by the opposite values—indifference to others and disloyalty—create no goodwill and work against the organization. The common ways of thinking are often reactive and counterproductive. We need this new model.
You can see for yourself why these Paradigm Shifts and new practices are vital. You can come up with many other success factors, but these five are inviolable. Leaders must be able to (1) find the “voice” of the organization, (2) execute with excellence, (3) unleash the productivity of people, (4) inspire trust, and (5) engender loyalty with all stakeholders.
A paradigm is like an operating system for a computer. The machine will only do what the operating system allows it to do. If your paradigms are from the past, you’ll be using obsolete applications that aren’t up to the requirements of today.
As the graphic below shows, you need an overarching “leadership operating system,” like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, to run today’s applications—the Paradigm Shifts we’ve listed. In this book, we’re going to invite you to adopt a new leadership operating system and to “download” the Paradigm Shifts to your own mind.
You will discover the key to a culture like the one that keeps the Bakerloo Line on track. By instilling The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People along with our other behavior-change solutions, we helped them build a culture of proactivity and resourcefulness. Around 100 million passengers ride the Bakerloo Line each year. The Bakerloo team succeeds in their increasingly demanding environment because