Mother Nature, as the saying goes, is a cruel mistress.
And, this week in Toronto I experienced her cruelty first-hand.
Like many Canadians at this time of the year, our backyard has quickly evolved from a beautiful tapestry of red, yellow and orange Fall trees to an enormous pile of fallen leaves that are quickly approaching waist-height. Leaves that don’t magically and neatly fall into compost bags.
Cue 8am Saturday morning. Compost bags in hand, I set out to return order and free movement to our backyard and get rid of the mountain of leaves.
Mother Nature was having none of it.
Literally as I filled one bag, a strong gust of wind would appear as if on cue and blow another 500 leaves on my head. I felt like a modern-day King Canute trying to hold back forces that were desperately beyond my control and my authority.
Ironically I was also listening to one of my favourite podcasts and an ongoing conversation about how empty many of the corporate value statements we proclaim truly are.
Lofty words like “Integrity”, “Courage” and “Trust” that are often taut with a level of moral superiority and corporate enthusiasm.
Lofty words that channel the passion, focus and strategic intent of a leadership team. A leadership team often flush from a three-day off-site 50 miles from the Monday morning realities of HQ.
Lofty words that, like those of King Canute and Hilton Barbour, are powerless against larger more powerful forces of nature that exist inside your firm.
The most powerful force inside your organization - your culture.
And, to torture the metaphor, if your business strategy is to hold back the waves like King Canute or stop the falling leaves like I was attempting, your culture often has an entirely different perspective.
As acclaimed culture thought leader Stan Slap would contend, your culture is seeking an answer to the most critical question any individual and organization has to face in 2020;
“Why should I trust you this time?”
This time because last time what you said and what you proclaimed didn’t come to pass.
When you said new ideas were welcomed and then immediately shut down anything that endangered the legacy systems and status quo we’d built. When you said failure was an option but then you censured any employee who didn’t have a ISO9001 pass rate on their boldest initiatives. When you said work/life balance was important but then sent urgent emails on a weekend and policed everyone’s timesheets like the Stasi. When you said collaboration was mission critical but promoted the colleague who withheld information and fostered departmental silos to protect their internal power.
Trust you becomes almost impossible when what you say and what you do are really two diverging paths in the forest.
Trust isn’t a mandate, it’s an outcome.
Trust is not something you can demand, it’s something you can only nurture.
Trust cannot be a set of words on a wall, it is only a set of behaviours that allow Trust to grow and flourish.
Instinctively both King Canute and I knew, all the shouting, pleading, exhortations and even swearing would have no impact on that powerful force we call Mother Nature.
Similarly, as Leaders we all instinctively know that all the placards, posters and platitudes have even less impact on that other powerful and intractable force of the universe.
Human Nature.
