Implementing service leadership in your organization

- People ask me all the time, "How do we implement "servant leadership in our organization?" And I start off by telling them the story about when I was a college professor which I was for 10 years. I was always in trouble with the faculty because the first day of class, I always gave the students out the final examination. And the faculty would say what are you doing? I'd say I'm confused, as they acted. I said I thought we were supposed to teach these kids. You are, but don't give them the questions on the final. And I'd say not only am I going to give them the questions on the final, whadda ya think I'm going to do all semester? I'm going to teach 'em the answers. So when they get to the final exam, they get A. Life's all about getting As, not some stupid normal distribution curve. And I've had that belief for a long time. And I, we teach a management master's program at the University of San Diego, and Gary Ridge, who has just become president of the WD-40 at the time, a good Aussie, he heard that story and he said boy, why don't we implement that in our organizations? And so, see, when you're managing people's performance in organizations, there's three parts of it. There's performance planning, where you set the goals and objectives and all. Which is, you're giving them the final exam ahead of time. Here's what you're being held accountable for. Here's what good behavior is. And you work with them on that. Then there's day-to-day coaching, which is how do you, in my language, teach 'em the answers, you know? So when they get to the third part, which is evaluation, how do they get an A? And yet when I go around the world and I ask people of performance planning, day-to-day coaching, and performance evaluation, when it becomes to those three, where do you spend the most time? Most people say it's in evaluation. What are they doing? They're filling out all these stupid forms on their people while their people are outside wondering how well they did. And then Gary does one other thing that's really powerful. Is every one of his tribe leaders meets once a quarter with their direct reports. And the first item of the agenda is, is the final exam still relevant? Because a lot of times, people set goals and then they file 'em, and nobody looks at 'em until the end of the year. And I got our annual performance review and they're pullin' these goals out, and they're evaluating people on things they haven't even done or looked at for six months. And so they can change their goals all the way up to the beginning of the 4th quarter. Then the second thing they do is, it's powerful, it's so stupid that managers are filling out forms on their people. You ought to have your people only fill out one performance review in your organization, their own. It's the job of the manager to agree or disagree with it. And so at WD-40, they have this report card. It says First quarter, Second quarter, Third quarter, Fourth quarter, Overall performance. And the tribe member brings in to their quarterly meeting their report card for the quarter, and each of their goals, they give themselves an A, a B, a C, or an L. An L stands for I'm still a learner, it's a new goal, so I shouldn't be evaluated. But the manager agrees. So sometimes they might come in and rate themselves high, give themselves an A in the goal. And the manager might say gee, that's not quite an A yet. I think it's a good solid B. Let's talk about how we can get it to an A. Or they might come down and rate themselves low. And the manager says no, that's not a C, looks like a good B, let's talk about how we can get that to an A. And so, it's amazing, their whole job is to get their people an A average at the end of the year. And when you get to now, performance evaluation, rather than that taking the most time, what takes the most time? The day-to-day coaching, where the action is. Where you're encouraging, you're directing, you're praising, you're doing all those kinds of good things. And now you get to evaluation, and the person brings in their report card for the year and gives themselves an A, a B, a C, you know on that, and you can agree. Now you go look at the stock report and performance of WD-40 last half a decade or more. And I want to tell ya, it's unbelievable the growth in that company. So that's servant leadership in action. Because the leadership part of servant leadership is in performance planning where you set the goals and all. And it's a collaborative process, but it's a responsibility. The manager, once that's done, you move to day-to-day coaching with one-on-ones and quarterly meetings and all, when you work for the person so when they get to the evaluation, they win. You want your people to get A averages. You want them to win. That's what servant leadership is all about. Helping people win. And when they win, you win. It's not initially about you, it's about them. But it's a win for everybody.