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Culture Shift: Aligning Employee Focus With the Rule of the O.M.I.T.
March 04, 2008
What's the One Most Important Thing in your business? If not everyone on your staff gives the same answer, you need to read this.
By Paul Levesque
The people who run a business usually have a pretty clear picture of what they're trying to accomplish. The problem is that their ultimate success inevitably depends on how well everybody else shares their understanding—and their enthusiasm.
This is where things usually begin to fall apart. But why?
A lot of the answer may lie embedded in what we can call the "Rule of the O.M.I.T." The Rule itself can be stated as follows:
In any collective endeavor, the prospect for success is directly proportional to the degree everyone agrees on what constitutes the One Most Important Thing.
This is not a complicated rule. I even suspect that not many would be inclined to disagree with it. Yet the vast majority of business organizations violate this simple rule every hour of every business day. And their failure to apply it may be doing more to destroy employee motivation—and the organization's chances for success—than all other factors combined.
Four Words, One at a Time
• The first initial in the rule's title suggests a business culture in which everyone understands and supports the ONE most important thing that drives everything else across the organization. This is where the first big problem arises.
In most businesses, there are multiple "top priority” objectives being pursued simultaneously. The CEO, for example, may dream of a day when everyone will place profitability above all other considerations. Meanwhile, Finance wishes everyone could see how cost-cutting (i.e., spending less) is really the critical survival issue. And don't forget that Marketing, R&D and HR similarly have their own goals. For rank-and-file employees, the workplace is a landscape of constantly shifting—and conflicting—priorities. Not a recipe for motivation and buy-in.
• The rule's second initial refers to the one MOST important thing. "Most" in this context means the thing that, if achieved, automatically achieves the greatest number of other desirable results. To illustrate, if profit is truly the most important thing, it can be improved almost overnight by downsizing, but employee morale will plummet and production capacity will also suffer. Not desirable. By contrast, if everyone sees "happy customers" as the one most important thing, achieving it also tends to improve profits and raise employee morale.
"Most" here can also mean "the thing that matters to most people" within the organization. Each of the tug-of-war priorities listed above matters primarily to the manager or department directly involved. A business-wide emphasis on helping customers or the community at large, by comparison, can become a meaningful priority for everyone at all levels.
• Thirdly, the rule addresses the one most IMPORTANT thing. "Important" here refers to the thing that makes people feel their work is accomplishing something "useful and necessary in the world," in the words of motivation pioneer Abraham Maslow. It should be something that gives meaning to their work lives and makes them feel they're making an important personal contribution to something worthwhile—something they can personally believe in and care about. Positive feedback from appreciative customers can give workers this kind of feeling. By contrast, news that their labors have made the wealthy owners of the business even wealthier is typically much less meaningful at the personal level.
• Lastly, the rule of the one most important THING uses the word "thing" to represent "aspirational objective." This is not a specific business goal or target, which can evolve over time. It's something more constant, more abstract, more primal—and more outwardly focused. That is, it revolves around filling a human need outside the organization. And it reflects "the whole reason this business was created in the first place." The most motivational candidates for the O.M.I.T. are those with customers at their center, such as helping customers solve problems, or in some way improving the customers' day or life.
Creating Cultural Alignment
Getting everyone to understand and support the O.M.I.T. is an exercise in cultural alignment—the kind of culture shift that will occupy this weekly column.
The Rule of the O.M.I.T. helps any business OMIT the mixed messages about what's really most important from its cultural landscape—the frustrating sense of being "pulled in all directions" makes it impossible to keep workers energized and focused.
In terms of creating a culture shift, just getting everyone talking about what the "One Most Important Thing" is—or should be—a very good place to start.
 Editor's Note: Be sure to catch Paul's weekly "Culture Shift" podcast for even more exclusive insights on how to start shifting your corporate culture. Listen to this week's episode, "Aligning Employee Focus: The Rule of the O.M.I.T.," at www.incentivemag.com/podcasts.
What is Culture Shift? Find out more about Incentive's new weekly online column and podcast feature—and a little about its author, Paul Levesque—at www.incentivemag.com/podcasts.
Incentive online "Culture Shift" columnist Paul Levesque is an author, seminar leader and public speaker with two decades' experience as an international business consultant specializing in the connection between employee motivation and customer satisfaction. He is a senior consultant with Boston-based Novations Inc., and is also founder and CEO of Customer Focus Breakthroughs Inc.
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