In Step - Aligning Individual and Company Goals
By Lorrie Bryan
The Dalai Lama says, “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion; and if you want to be happy, practice compassion.” Leo Tolstoy said, “If you want to be happy, be.”
And at FOCUS Brands Inc. they simply say, “Make people happy.” In fact the stated purpose at this multimillion-dollar international restaurant franchisor and operator is to make people happy. In this case people refers to everyone associated with the company: its owners, franchise partners, consumers, local communities, the associates working at the corporate headquarters and the front-line employees at more than 3,300 bakeries, cafes, ice cream shoppes and restaurants worldwide.
According to FOCUS Brands CEO Russ Umphenour, this emphasis on happiness contributes significantly to the overall success of FOCUS Brands. “Our job as leaders is to create an environment where people motivate themselves to achieve mutually beneficial goals. In other words, we have to help the company reach its goals and likewise help each individual reach his or her goals. That’s a very important part of what we strive to do.”
As simple as the idea sounds, aligning individual and company goals is a complicated concept, primarily because employee culture is important to the task of aligning goals, but developing the culture is so ambiguous. Three factors that can contribute to developing a successful employee culture are establishing core values, demonstrating core values and readily communicating core values.
Establishing Core Values
“I’d really never thought about a company having a set of beliefs or values until I read a book in 1973 written by Thomas Watson of IBM called “A Business and its Beliefs.” In this book, he stressed that every business needs a set of beliefs or values. And I have found that to be essential for keeping everyone on the same page,” says Umphenour, a 40-year veteran of restaurant management. “Our guiding values form the basis of everything we do at FOCUS Brands. And adherence to these values ensures our long-term success—that we continually attain our purpose of making people happy. It’s the responsibility of our associates to live these values every day, so we strive to hire people who share our values and personally believe in and live these values.”
Dr. Terry Loe, director of the Center for Professional Selling, at Kennesaw State University Coles College of Business, concurs. “ If you take a look at the most successful companies—and I use some of the examples from research by Jim Collins (“Good to Great”)—Abbot, Circuit City, Philip Morris, Walgreens, Wells Fargo, each have (or had) cultures that were unique and strong. The cultures were strong in the sense that they had a common belief in what they were doing, trying to accomplish and, in a sense, who they were.”
At FOCUS Brands, the values aren’t complex or lofty; they could easily be the same values that guide and inspire a kindergarten class or scout troop. However, these are the values that the leaders at FOCUS Brands keep in the forefront and weigh enormous decisions against at every level:
1. Aim high.
2. Be the best.
3. Get results.
4. Do what’s right.
5. Go green.
6. Have fun.
7. Give back.
Demonstrating Core Values
So how are these values applied at the front lines of the 3,300 eateries that FOCUS Brands operates? Welcome to Moes! The happiness starts when you walk in the door and are greeted enthusiastically by the staff at Moe’s, one of the five different restaurant brands that FOCUS operates. A pop-culture inspired menu, great music and engaging festive atmosphere make it fun. And the food is the best—always made fresh from quality ingredients, contain no animal fat or MSG, and no microwaves or freezers are used. With more than 400 locations, Moe’s Southwest Grill was named a Top Ten Growth Chain by Restaurant Hospitality in 2007, a Gold Award winner of the 2008 Consumer’s Choice in Chains Awards and the next “It” brand by AOL Business in 2009.
And at Moe’s they don’t just dream green. They adhere to sustainability best practices and have assembled a team to lead and inspire sustainable initiatives for Moe’s future and for the future of its employees and guests. Also, “giving back” applies to more than pocket change. They continually work with local non-profits by catering affordable fundraiser events in addition to sponsoring larger projects. Last year, 10 Washington, D.C.-area Moe’s raised $43,000 for juvenile diabetes.
According to Stan Slap, author of New York Times best-seller “Bury My Heart at Conference Room B,” all of this contributes significantly to getting the employee culture to embrace those values and keeping everyone on the same page. “It’s important for leadership to declare what you stand for first—what will never change—and then, do something significant to prove you mean it. The employee culture will pick that up as a proof point that you can be trusted.”
As Slap explains, the company goals have to align with the goals of your employee culture, and the employee culture is obsessed with two concerns—survival and emotional prosperity. “You can’t bluff, bribe or bully an employee culture. You can’t tell it what to believe or stop it from existing. But you can recognize its power to make or break any of your little strategies. A culture is a rational organism, and it is objective and agnostic. It simply wants to know how everything affects the two things it considers most important. If the culture wants something to happen, it will. If it doesn’t, it won’t. Neither business logic, nor management authority, nor any compelling competitive urgency will convince an employee culture to adopt a corporate cause as if it were its own.”
Umphenour, who began his distinguished career as a part-time counter person at Arby’s, agrees. “Motivate is not an action verb. Motivation comes from within when someone is in the right place at the right time for them.”
Communicating Core Values with Branding
Aligning sales people or front-line employees with the marketing department and the overall strategy of the company is sometimes a challenge. While there is no greater method of increasing revenue and protecting market share than becoming properly branded, successful branding also fosters alignment within a company.
“You don’t have to align a sales organization’s goals with a real brand strategy; it’s already aligned,” Slap explains. “A brand is not about communicating your intent to the world. It’s about why the world should care. Attach any marketing message to the noble purpose of your company—not what you do but why you do it. This gives the employee culture a reason to believe. The culture will take its sense of self from the quality it represents and from how the company makes the world a better place.”
Slap says that a company can only be branded for something that it can control—how it sells. “You’ll never have a unique sustained lock on a high-demand product. So you must be branded for how you sell, not just what you sell. This means that the relationship between company and customer is the essence of the brand, and that relationship is in the hands of the sales organization. Sales teams aren’t motivated by money; they’re motivated by recognition. They use money to buy meaning, so skip the middleman and give them the meaning directly. Protecting the company’s brand promise is the stuff of legacy impact. Recognize them for that potential.”
“Communication of and belief in the marketing strategy by management is key, but in the sales and marketing area there is often a disconnect. “Too often the sales and marketing areas have built “silos” around their distinct areas of responsibility,” Loe explains. “This can only be overcome by communication during the development of the marketing strategy. Development of an effective strategy is dependent upon an accurate and thorough understanding of the market as well as the organization’s capabilities and competencies. Salespeople must be willing to communicate the needs, characteristics and potential of the company’s target market(s) to the marketing department, and those developing the strategies must listen.”
Success, again, depends upon how well each party understands the other and how the implementation of the strategy will ultimately help all achieve their own goals. “At the end of the day, marketing is what drives a business, it’s all pervasive,” Umphenour says. “It’s important for us to get feedback and support from the front lines. So it’s a constant learning process for everyone.”
Essentially, establishing and making shared values a cornerstone of the company fosters a culture in which the individuals feel like they are part of something—a mission that is worthwhile and bigger than themselves. “The rewards and incentives are paramount, but the leadership in the company must help everyone understand the importance of their individual roles in accomplishing the mission of the organization,” Loe adds. “Almost all people want to be a part of something worthwhile and meaningful, and when these types of cultures exist, most employees become at least a bit more selfless and motivated.”