One of the biggest underlying problems in many companies is their corporate culture, but since this is hard to change it rarely gets addressed in a meaningful way. Most of the short-term strategies companies use to approach this problem focus on the “masters of the universe” – the people with titles like “CEO” or “top producer.” The expectation seems to be that since the people at the top set the tone of the company, if you make them happy and productive, the rest of the workforce will follow suit.
But this approach rarely works. Giving the CEO a big bonus (or swapping them out for a new CEO) rarely has an impact on the rest of the organization. Anyone who has worked in a large organization can tell you that while the company culture may be “set” at the top, it’s lived out by the people at the bottom. They are the ones interacting with their coworkers and customers on the front lines of the company’s business. If you can get them to buy in and live out the company’s desired culture, you can change the whole organization. Let me give you an example of the impact these kinds of people can have.
When I began my football career at Virginia Tech in the 1970s I arrived as a celebrated recruit but found myself unceremoniously relegated to the “Meat Squad.” Our sole function was mimicking Tech’s next opponent’s offense during practices while the Tech defense pummeled us again and again. We were the bottom of the barrel, lower even than the third-string players. I never could quite decide if they called it the “Meat Squad” because of what we looked like at the end of a long practice or because we were chewed up by the older, more-experienced first-team defense day after day.
After about two weeks of dreading and enduring this relentless grind we found ourselves running an option play that completely fooled the defense and led to a touchdown. The defensive players were then punished by our coaches and forced to run multiple wind sprints. We tried the play again after the sprints and the defense was fooled again: our quarterback ran for a touchdown and this time gave it a little high-step for effect. The coaches made the defenders run more sprints, so by the time we lined up for the third attempt they were fighting mad.
Our quarterback dropped back to throw and released the pass, but a full two seconds after it left his hand he was steamrolled by our ferocious outside linebacker and knocked unconscious.
Everybody on the Meat Squad was shocked that this had happened but too afraid to try and do anything about it. We stood there for a minute, looking at each other and at our quarterback on the ground. All of a sudden we heard a bunch of noise behind us and turned around to see a full-blown fight going on – fists flying, wrestling on the ground, everything – between the graduate assistant who served as coach of the Meat Squad and the outside linebacker.
The other coaches broke up the fight and we ultimately returned to practice. Once I got over the shock of the whole thing it actually made me feel kind of good. Not about the quarterback getting hurt, but because as low as those of us on the Meat Squad were, we had a coach who thought we were worth fighting for. That day we learned that our coach had our backs, even against other members of his own team.
From that day forward our group fought harder, hustled more and challenged that defense every play. We wanted to do well for the coach who fought for us. That defense went on to become one of the very best in the country that year, and I think us guys on the Meat Squad deserve a little bit of credit for helping them get there.
What about the coach? His name was Bruce Arians, and he just coached the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a victory in Super Bowl LV.
Have a great weekend,
Ro