My grandma, Mabel Reynolds Ostrander, and I shared one of those special relationships as rare as a double rainbow. She was 53 when I was 10. That’s when we planted our first Victory Garden together during World War II. We planted seeds together—in the soil—and in each other.

Grandma lived 87 seasons without a complaint. I was 44 when I last saw her. But I remember every mince and lemon tart, every bite of made-from-scratch apple pie and every lingering wave of her hand as she stood (out of sight, or so she thought) behind the rayon Priscilla curtains in the little house at 718 West Pennsylvania Ave. in San Diego, Calif., where I was born and raised. As our station wagon full of kids and contentment would slowly pull away from the curb, we would all look back at her and wave—and I would gaze at her fragile silhouette through the rear-view mirror, wishing I could frame her there forever, just that way—wondering how many more Easter and Christmas dinners we would share.

Most of all, I remember my grandma and I planting seeds. We planted squash, beans, corn, watermelons, beets, pansies, mums and other flowers. I’ll admit I rode my bike those 20 miles each Saturday more for the bonus of the conversation and the homemade pastries than for the vegetables and flowers. But no matter how full I was after I ate, I was always left hungry for more of the wisdom and optimism she shared with me.

I’ll never forget the day we tasted our first harvest as a result of crossing a plum tree with an apricot tree. The ripe fruit was pink, not purple like a plum or orange like an apricot but a combination of both. “Gee, do you suppose they’ll be any good?” I asked. “Why of course they will be wonderful,” she chided. “Didn’t we do the planting, nurturing and pruning?”

Sure enough, they were delicious, even though they were different from any fruit I’d ever seen before. “That’s because they are uniquely unlike any other fruit you’ll ever eat. They are plumcots!” she said. ‘“You always get out what you put in,” she continued as we sat under the tree eating most of what we had picked. (Finish reading here).

I recently attended a conference where Guy Kawasaki challenged the audience to create meaningful “Mantras” for their companies.

He explained how the standard corporate “Mission Statement” really wasn’t cutting it anymore. In describing the process of conducting a two-day offsite meeting with a highly paid consultant to facilitate the flip-chart discussion, he revealed that the Mission Statement Generator on the Dilbert web site actually comes up with some pretty good ones. So good in fact, that a global accounting firm nearly adopted one created on the Dilbert site which was submitted to the company’s internal contest — it won second place. So I tried it for myself and found it works for just about any industry.

For an alternative energy company:

“The customer can count on us to continually engineer world-class services such that we may continue to synergistically network ethical resources while maintaining the highest standards”

For a business services media company:

“It’s our mission to interactively supply scalable resources so that we may endeavor to competently disseminate business materials while maintaining the highest standards.”

How about for a consulting firm:

“We efficiently simplify low-risk high-yield paradigms to allow us to enthusiastically fashion market-driven deliverables to stay competitive in tomorrow’s world”

OK, these are silly and no one in their right mind would ever put out this kind of drivel, right?

Wrong.

Read this ACTUAL mission statement – you will be surprised where it comes from:

“The following six guiding principles will help us measure the appropriateness of our decisions:

Provide a great work environment and treat each other with respect and dignity.

Embrace diversity as an essential component in the way we do business.

Apply the highest standards of excellence to the purchasing, roasting and fresh delivery of our coffee.

Develop enthusiastically satisfied customers all of the time.

Contribute positively to our communities and our environment.

Recognize that profitability is essential to our future success.”

This is from Starbucks. Shouldn’t their mission statement be more like “We brew delicious coffee and build friendships”?

Bayer’s mission statement requires a 9-page PDF. I thought they were supposed to get rid of headaches, not give them!

If you want to create a mission statement that actually means something – think about what your company actually provides to the consumer and go from there. You really don’t need to write a manifesto or a behavioral guideline for employees. Just say what you do.

If you want to have some fun, try the Dilbert Mission Statement generator, or the B.S. generator which is really good for generating PowerPoint buzzwords.

Success is a team sport. It takes the entire team, from entry level employees all the way up the ladder to the executive suite, to run the company engine on all cylinders.

The environmental factors leading to a company’s failure, on the other hand, typically flows down from the top. It is unfortunate the number of senior executives ready, willing and able to quickly assign the blame of failure squarely on employees. However, the entire workforce doesn’t show up to work and uniformly decide to screw up the company. The common scenario is that leadership begins to make decisions that begin to negatively alter the course of the organization, ultimately leading to its demise.

What are leadership actions that are potential signals the company is headed for trouble? Here are some clues your company could be headed for rough waters.

#1 – Me, Me, Me: When leadership decisions are guided by “what’s in it for me?” This is a sign leaders are less interested in the long-term viability of a company and more interested in their own personal short-term gain. If this is happening it’s like working at Titanic Inc. A good indication this is happening is when company decisions are made based on how it will affect executive compensation and their incentive payouts.

#2 – Communicate is a Four Syllable Word: When the leadership starts to communicate with employees on a “need to know” basis, start running for the exits. When employees read important company news in the newspaper rather than the company newsletter, develop an exit strategy. A lack of communication typically indicates leaders are hiding bad news, making decisions without sufficient input, or possibly courting a new buyer for the company, unaware of the financial benefits of teamwork, making a play on a new company with excessive staff levels, or simply do not like people and avoid employees at all cost.

#3 – Executive Bullies at Work Here: One time I was told by the president it was my fault there was bad Karma in the company. Funny thing I was not the one yelling, screaming and cursing at employees on a daily basis. Employees were being physically and mentally destroyed by this executive bully and I wanted to put a stop to it. As a result, I became the bad guy for trying to curtail an out-of-control executive’s behavior. Now I was considered disloyal to the company. My career was put on ice by a new supervisor where frustrating my every move was his daily goal.

#4 – Lack of Vision: When senior leadership does not make time to adequately explain the vision and mission of a company, employees will lose interest in the company and not engage in the important work of the company. Sometimes executives are afraid they will share their valuable secrets if they talk to employees about their mission, vision and values. Some executives think employees should just know this stuff without the president taking time to explain it. “If you are so smart, why do I have to explain this human resource crap to you,” is the general feeling. People perish due to a lack of vision, states the scriptures. Companies file Chapter 11 due to lack of vision.

And #5 – Who is the President? Besides the need to trust and respect their leaders, employees need to know who is running the company. I once worked at a company where the president was rarely seen walking around in the office. We would go months and months before seeing him. There is a comfort feeling knowing you have an active, engaged president who cares for employees at the helm of the ship. If the president is rarely seen and seldom walks around to visit with employees – except for maybe the Christmas Party – this could be quite unsettling to the workforce. This same president loved to meet with local charities and press gatherings but avoided his own employees. It’s like a football coach going absent from practice and the sidelines during games and only appearing in front of the team when it is time for the news conference. If you have leaders who hide in their execu-caves, the next thing missing might be your paycheck.

Share with us some positive examples you’ve seen in your workplace. Examples of where people were motivated by good leaders.

Mike Zimmerman September 30, 2009

THE IDEA WAS GENIUS, really. Blake Mycoskie, at the time best known for a 2002 stint on the reality show The Amazing Race, was looking to start something. He’d already started half a dozen businesses, from laundry to billboards, but nothing had inspired him. Mycoskie wanted to inspire. Add to the world, not take from it. He was young, motivated, overflowing with entrepreneurial spirit… and without an idea. He had some cash, but where to put it? His muse finally arrived in Argentina, of all places.

He’d gone there in January 2006 to learn how to play polo— Argentina has some of the best polo farms in the world. But in the backcountry, he saw other things: many poor children, shoeless, and some of the locals wearing simple yet incredibly comfortable farming shoes. So he was sitting on that Argentinean polo farm one day “and that’s where the epiphany happened,” he says. Cool shoes… a style not seen in the States… redesign them, bring them north, and for every pair you sell, give a pair away to one of those shoeless children.

TOMS Shoes—and high-profile “philanthropic capitalism”— was born. He has created an entire business model that inspires. “Ultimately, I’m trying to create something that’s going to be here long after I’m gone,” he says.

Business has thrived. As the fashion industry and consumers have embraced the many styles of TOMS Shoes, “shoe drops” organized by the company in Argentina, Ethiopia and South Africa have distributed 140,000 pairs of shoes to needy kids. The shoes, priced from $44 to $70 (and $98 for a women’s boot), are the ultimate feel-good purchase. The charitable business model has attracted famous business partners as well (there are now limited-edition Dave Matthews Band shoes, for example).

Through all this, Mycoskie maintains a weird double-life. Half his time is spent on the business, meeting with style mavens and fashionistas, working on fresh designs, and getting the word on the street through personal appearances and projects like his ubiquitous AT&T commercial. The other half is spent in desolate countries handing out shoes to smiling kids—the aforementioned “shoe-drops.” The company plans to give away 300,000 shoes in 2009. (Finish reading here).

During lunch the other day I was seeking marketing advice from a good friend and respected business leader.  Full of wonderful and relevant ideas, she mentioned my writing style tended to be very direct.  This Tulsa business leader said a couple of articles seemed to reach out and grab the reader in a more threatening tone.  Because I greatly respect her opinion, I wanted to share some thoughts.

First, I apologize if my writing is too aggressive at times. Unfortunately, we work in a business climate today where overly aggressive behavior is rewarded. The “just get the job done” attitude is not the way to build long-term, viable organizations. Short-term thinking and decision-making, along with greedy behavior, will eventually lead to an organization’s failure. (Finish Reading).

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