March 10, 2010
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| The "Actively Caring" culture at an Illinois manufacturing plant was inspired by the Spitzer Center's philosophy and curriculum. |
One Company's Journey From Level 2 to an "Actively Caring" Culture
Joanne Morton is a Human Resources manager with a heavy equipment manufacturing company in Illinois. She has an extensive background in corporate culture measurement and change, and she was one of the first HR professionals to apply the Spitzer Center’s Four Levels of Happiness® model to an industrial setting. In this interview, she describes the curriculum’s impact on the large facility where she worked from 2005 to 2008.
How did you first learn about the Spitzer Center’s curriculum?
I’ve known Joe Atteridge since 1985 when he was my boss at American Airlines. Before I moved to my current organization in 2005, I was working with Joe in a partnership called Inside Results. We had a contract with The Pacific Institute [TPI] to implement their client education, and the company I now work for was one of the clients.
Inside Results had a process for helping a company to change its culture, and that process included TPI’s Investment in Excellence program. We also used the Organizational Culture Inventory [OCI] and the Leadership Impact assessment tool from Human Synergistics.
The great value of these tools is that they give you a measuring point and a foundation. They show what your current culture looks like, and leaders can see when their own behavior is reinforcing the old culture they want to change. So they can’t just say, “These people need to change.” They know they need to change as well. That was the perfect time to introduce what we then called the Spirit of Leadership curriculum from the Spitzer Center. Now it’s called Journey to Excellence.
What was the response from the leaders you worked with?
It made a tremendous impact on the organization, and it made a tremendous impact on me as well. By this time, the client company had asked me to join them as an HR manager. They wanted me to continue with the journey we had begun, and I was so involved I wanted to stay to see this change take place and sustain itself.
It really changed leaders’ perspectives?
Absolutely. I had leaders telling me that they finally got it. They had an “aha moment” where it all came together for them, and they understood it and could visualize it. They understood Level 2 behavior when they saw it, so they could stop meetings from going down into a Level 2 type of conversation and keep it elevated at Level 3. The language in the organization was all about how to become a Level 3 leader. We talked about being Constructive Leaders as well because of our exposure to the OCI. For many people, it was really life-altering. I just can’t say enough about how impactful it was.
As we tried to find more descriptive words to express the vision to others, we began to talk in terms of “Actively Caring.” Level 3 leadership and Actively Caring became synonymous.
"Naturally, we were still a business, and as a business you need to make money for the shareholder and the employees and the community. But how you do that is as important as what you do. How do you behave? How do you treat people? Our people embraced the standard of being a constructive, Level 3 organization." |
What did Actively Caring look like in practice?
From a safety standpoint, for example, it means that I don’t only care about my own safety, I care about yours. If I see you put yourself in harm’s way, I’m going to approach you and tell you because I actively care about you. And if someone came up to you and said, “You’re putting yourself in harm’s way,” your response shouldn’t be defensive or contentious. It should be, “Thank you so much for telling me.” That was our affirmation and our vision. Everyone clearly understood this was where we wanted to be.
From a diversity and inclusion standpoint, Actively Caring meant truly valuing people different from you. It meant going out of your way to seek different opinions and including people, so that no one would feel like they weren’t part of the team.
The company has always been generous in giving to the community, but Actively Caring brought us to a new level. In the past, when employees asked us to donate money to Little League teams, we said, “No – if we give it to you, we’d have to give it to all these other people and it would cost too much.” But when we started looking at these requests in a Level 3 way, we said, “Wait a minute. Isn’t this exactly what we want to do?” Our company values included teamwork, integrity, commitment and excellence. What better way did we have to teach children these values than by supporting Little League? So we created guidelines for anyone who was coaching or involved in these teams, and we’d give employees money within these guidelines. It was our way to celebrate and thank employees for taking their time to teach children these values.
So Actively Caring and Level 3 was something everyone learned, not just the leadership?
Our definition of a leader included everyone, because everyone influenced the behavior of others. You could be a bad leader or a good leader, with a good leader obviously being a Level 3 leader. As the culture gained this sense of Level 3 happiness and Level 3 caring, it gained a momentum all its own. Employees approached us and said, “Can we recycle and give the money to the community?” The answer was, “Of course,” and soon they were buying winter coats for disadvantaged children, or helping to fund one square meal a day in the summer, when the school lunch programs weren’t running. These were things we were all tremendously proud of. Actively Caring was showing up in all these different ways. It became the culture.
Our definition of a leader included everyone, because everyone influenced the behavior of others. You could be a bad leader or a good leader, with a good leader obviously being a Level 3 leader. As the culture gained this sense of Level 3 happiness and Level 3 caring, it gained a momentum all its own. Employees approached us and said, “Can we recycle and give the money to the community?” The answer was, “Of course,” and soon they were buying winter coats for disadvantaged children, or helping to fund one square meal a day in the summer, when the school lunch programs weren’t running. These were things we were all tremendously proud of. Actively Caring was showing up in all these different ways. It became the culture.
Did everyone buy into the changes or were there skeptics?
There are always going to be people who don’t want to participate for whatever reason, but the majority of folks, this is what they were seeking. They were looking for ways to help others be successful on the job, in the community, at home, and in their churches. Actively Caring was the missing piece that brought it all together.
Naturally, we were still a business, and as a business you need to make money for the shareholder and the employees and the community. But how you do that is as important as what you do. How do you behave? How do you treat people? Our people embraced the standard of being a constructive, Level 3 organization. It was a goal people could clearly understand and visualize. And it was very powerful.
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Last changed: Jul 15 2009 at 10:36 AM