CEOs can’t be everywhere at once (unless they have spycams in everyone’s cubicles, but most have better things to do than monitor their staff’s every move). Leaders have to trust their people to do the right thing even when they aren’t being watched. If a company has a set of guiding principles that represent the heart of its organization, and its employees follow these principles, then their making tough decisions and using good judgment in ambiguous situations becomes much easier. This is why companies need to have credos.
Some of the business leaders who are involved with the Fuqua/Coach K Center on Leadership and Ethics have shared their thoughts about company credos at our board meetings. I hear over and over how important they are and why every employee must understand why the company credo exists and what it really means. That’s another way of saying that employees need to know what they are working toward when they go to work every day.
Bill Weldon, who retired as CEO of Johnson & Johnson in 2012, explained how J&J—a very decentralized organization with 250 operating companies and more than 125,000 employees—maintains alignment of purpose through their credo. J&J’s credo is a full page in length and details its responsibilities to health-care providers, patients, employees, and the community. It covers everything from providing quality products and reducing costs, to encouraging open communication and continuing innovation. Weldon explained, “The credo is our bull’s-eye—the heart and soul of the company. It’s not just delivering results… but how you deliver them that is important.”
Our board has also frequently discussed the fragility of reputations and the fact that a person or company can spend years building a reputation and then lose it in a single day. For example, Billy Campbell, who is CEO of Forbes Travel Guide and was formerly the president of Discovery Networks, talked about signing a major sponsorship deal with Lance Armstrong. He noted that up until October 2012, he would have said that signing Lance was his proudest moment. Now, not so much. The cyclist is banned for life from competing in the sport that made him an icon. His name will be forever associated with the doping scandal that ruined his career.
Joe Bailey, who formerly served both as the CEO of the Miami Dolphins and as vice president of administration of the Dallas Cowboys, brought up the subject of bounties in pro football (financial incentives for players to deliberately injure opponents in order to knock them out of the game). Joe nailed it when he said that integrity should always be at the heart of your enterprise. “You are a brand. And everything that can happen to you can hurt your brand, so you need to protect it.” Joe’s feeling was that bounties would never be considered, under any circumstances, if the team leadership was truly focused on creating a culture of integrity. “You can put prevention systems in place to stop this from happening, but if you have a culture of integrity it will dissuade people from taking part in any of these kinds of things [bounties]. It’s all about protecting your brand.”
Penn State learned all this the hard way. Beloved football coach Joe Paterno was a great source of university pride for decades—until former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky was indicted on fifty-two counts of child sexual abuse (and found guilty of forty-five). The university found out that Paterno had done far too little to follow up on early reports of Sandusky’s behavior. Some go as far as to say he turned a blind eye. Coach Paterno was fired. He died several months later of cancer and, I am guessing, a broken heart.
Look at Michael Vick, a Heisman Trophy contender in college and the overall first pick in the 2001 NFL draft. He led the Atlanta Falcons to the playoffs twice. But the gridiron clearly didn’t provide Vick with the type of competition he craved, because off the field he became involved in an illegal dog-fighting ring, then ended up in prison.
End of story? Nope. Vick got out of prison after almost two years and signed with the Philadelphia Eagles. He was named Comeback Player of the Year in 2010. And while Vick lost his $2 million endorsement deal with Nike in 2007 (felony convictions will do that), he was re-signed by them again in 2011.
He may be a great player, but my 110-pound black Lab and I won’t cheer for the Eagles. I don’t care if Vick has set a record for most yards rushed by a quarterback. I will always think of him as the guy who got his kicks by torturing and killing dogs. “Don’t people deserve a second chance?” you ask. Sure. I realize that Vick paid his dues by serving time, and I do think everyone deserves a shot at redemption. Hell, who doesn’t love a comeback story? And maybe Vick has changed. But I think that the endorsement deal with Nike sends a bad message: talent trumps ethics. The sad truth is that we are quick to overlook character flaws when people perform really well.
My hat is off to Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, who didn’t want Vick back on his team after the dog-fighting scandal. Blank knew Vick was a talented quarterback, and he’d made it clear that he believed Vick deserved a second chance in the NFL, but he wasn’t willing to put Vick back in a Falcons uniform.
“Win at any cost” is a credo, but it’s a bad one. It’s not the way to go. I’m not even sure it leads to more victories in the long run, and it’s no way to live. Unfortunately, many in the world of competitive sports seem to have that mind-set. I think that all sports teams should have credos that everyone lives and breathes in order to work toward that culture of integrity that Joe Bailey talked about. Then when they hear that an assistant coach is abusing children, they will know exactly what to do—regardless of whether the resulting publicity will “hurt the program.”
Individuals should also have credos. We all need a set of key words that remind us of how we want to behave in our professional and personal lives. Those words can provide a lens through which we see and engage the world—not just when we are up against the ropes, but 24/7. West Point’s credo consists of three words that influence cadets’ lives long after they have left the United States Military Academy. These words are: Duty. Honor. Country.
On May 12, 1962, Gen. Douglas MacArthur gave a speech to West Point cadets and gave meaning to those words: “Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.”
The current mission statement of West Point reads as follows: “To educate, train, and inspire the Corps of Cadets so that each graduate is a commissioned leader of character committed to the values of Duty, Honor, Country and prepared for a career of professional excellence and service to the nation as an officer in the United States Army.”
Note that the mission statement also mentions a “career of selfless service to the nation.” The commitment to Duty, Honor, and Country doesn’t end when graduates leave West Point, nor does it end when or if they leave the military. These words are meant to stay with them for life; no matter where they are or what they are doing.
A personal credo can help you stay true to yourself and to your beliefs even in extreme circumstances, when risks to your physical and mental well-being might threaten your values. What’s your credo? What is your purpose? What do you strive to do daily? How do you think people would currently describe you as a person? As a leader? How do you want people to describe you? What values are most important to you? Know what you stand for. And know what you would fight for. How do you want to be remembered when you leave this earth?
Here’s another question to ask yourself: What are you are doing right now to work toward that personal credo? A credo isn’t about writing a few words down. It’s about taking action. It’s about living those words every day.
Coming up with a credo can be a superinteresting process. It requires you to look deep inside. You have to investigate your values and articulate them in a form that inspires you. You don’t have to have something as detailed and lengthy as Johnson & Johnson’s credo. You can even narrow it down to a phrase or just a few words—call it a mantra. (Note to wise guys: we’re looking for something a little deeper than “Mmm Mmm Good.”) Your mantra might change over the years as your values evolve or as new words or phrases arise, and that’s okay, too (which is why it’s best not to tattoo it anywhere on your body). Maybe you need a few sentences—fine—but come up with something that represents both who you are and who you want to become.
So, what’s my mantra? “Count on me.” I aspire to be the clutch player—the person who others can always count on. I want to be the go-to person when my loved ones or colleagues or teammates need help. I want others to think of me as the person who always follows through on a commitment. I will never let you down when I tell you I am going to give you my all.
A credo, or mantra (call it what you like), offers a ready-made platform for the kind of leadership you want to embody in your life as well. Making a conscious effort to demonstrate your credo will help build your identity as a leader. I’ve noticed over the years that if you live by your mantra, it’s easier to gain the trust and loyalty of the people on your team, because they know what to expect from you. Here’s an example:
After spending a few years studying the art and science of leadership, I began lecturing at various meetings and conferences. I developed material that presented leadership lessons in a context much different from that used by most leadership experts. I wanted a platform that would enable me to share this information with various corporate entities, associations, and government organizations.
I had been trying for months to get some of the major speakers bureaus around the country to consider representing me. These bureaus represented famous politicians, professional sports coaches, military heroes, business leaders, authors, entrepreneurs, and the like. None of them would give me the time of day. I would cold-call them and say things like, “I am going to be in your area next week for some meetings, and I am wondering if it might be possible to pop into your office for ten minutes and introduce myself.” No one wanted to see me. They would reply with some kind of dismissal like, “Well, we only meet with speakers who are on our roster,” which made no sense to me. If they refused to meet with me, then how was I supposed to get on their roster? In fact, how was anyone supposed to get on their roster? It was kind of funny (in an incredibly frustrating way).
I kept cold-calling bureaus and continued to pitch myself as a keynote speaker on the topic of leadership. The responses I got usually went something like:
“We already have quite a few leadership speakers and CEOs on our roster. Have you ever run a Fortune 500 company?”
“Well, no,” I would say. “But I have run other things… like errands.”
Click.
Then I tried the adventure speaker angle. I would tell them I had climbed peaks all over the world and had completed grueling polar expeditions in the most extreme environments known to man. To that I would get reactions like, “Hmmm… have you lost any body parts? Maybe cut off an arm or something?”
That last was obviously a reference to Aron Ralston, the adventurer who was trapped by a boulder in a Utah canyon and cut off his own arm. Aron is the subject of the Oscar-nominated movie 127 Hours. He was killing it on the speaking circuit. And rightly so—his story of survival is pretty incredible.
Sure, I had endured a couple of cardiac procedures, but when your surgery is performed by a licensed surgeon with sterile instruments in a hospital versus doing it yourself with an old, dull pocketknife in Canyonlands National Park, it doesn’t really have the same “wow factor.” In short, none of the bureaus had much of an interest in talking to me, let alone booking me as a conference speaker. I eventually realized that if you aren’t an Olympic athlete or a CEO or the subject of an Oscar-nominated movie or a best-selling author or someone with some kind of name-recognition, the bureaus generally aren’t interested.
One bureau took pity on me and did let me come in for a chat. Keppler Speakers is located in the Washington, DC, area—not exactly in my backyard, since I was living in California at the time. I called them and told them the same fib I had told every other bureau: “I am going to be in your area next week, could I please pop in and say hello?” And to my surprise, they said, “Sure. We always like to meet new speakers.”
I was in! Well… it was progress anyway. I didn’t know if Keppler would seriously consider adding me to their roster, but I did know that I could at least set foot in their offices without someone calling security.
I immediately started thinking about what I could do to stand out from the other athletes and industry experts who were also knocking on Keppler’s door. What could I do to show them that they should be working with me? How could I demonstrate my personal credo? How could I show them that they could always count on me to give my all?
With those questions in mind, I spent some time on the Keppler website. I looked at the photos of the people who worked there and memorized everyone’s names so that when I met them in person, I could greet them before they introduced themselves. I also studied the brief bios that included people’s interests and hobbies. I memorized random facts about each member of the Keppler team so when they walked into the conference room for our meeting I could offer up something like, “Ah, you’re Eliot Gunner—the horse-racing fan!” I knew who liked baseball and who liked gardening and who was a Carolina basketball fan (I was still gracious to that guy, by the way). They would either consider me to be well-prepared… or a stalker. My hope was that when I left their office in Arlington, Virginia, they would know that they could always count on me to go above and beyond the call of duty.
I figured my depth of preparation would show them that this meeting was important to me and that they, as individuals, were also important to me. Once they all sat down around the large oval conference room table I gave them a brief overview of my speech topic, which was leadership lessons learned from my various mountaineering and polar expeditions. Jim Keppler, who founded the bureau back in 1983, said to me, “Thank you so much for coming in. I think we can do some business with you.” Yessssssss! I was absolutely thrilled.
Did I hear from them after that? No! Well, at least not right away. Radio silence after the meeting.
Six months went by… and then I got a call. It came from one of their most senior agents, Gary McManis. I think it was a Wednesday evening—maybe 6:30 Gary’s time. “Alison? Gary McManis from Keppler Speakers here. I have an opportunity that I think might be a good fit for you. What are the chances that you could get yourself to Vegas before tomorrow morning at seven a.m.?”
I was intrigued. They had a client who was in a bind. Jeff Hurt was the conference planner for a large association that was holding a meeting for six thousand people at Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino. Hurt had a star-studded lineup of keynote speakers. That afternoon the attendees had been treated to an hour with Major League Baseball Hall-of-Famer Cal Ripken Jr. The next morning Carolyn Kepcher, Donald Trump’s associate from The Apprentice, was scheduled to do the opening keynote. This was back in 2006, when The Apprentice was a top-rated show. Carolyn was not only a big television personality at the time, but she was also a successful businesswoman and served as the executive vice president, chief operating officer, and general manager for the Trump National Golf Club.
Unfortunately, Carolyn was sick. She wasn’t going to be able to show up for the conference to deliver her scheduled presentation on business lessons she learned from The Apprentice. Now, when it’s an internal company meeting and the speaker is a no-show, you can just tell all the employees that they will have an extra hour of free time and they’ll happily check voice mail and e-mail and kill the sixty minutes. But when it is an association meeting, and the participants have paid to attend the conference, and perhaps some decided to attend solely based on hearing a particular speaker—well, you’ve got a problem.
I told Gary I could make the 10:30 p.m. flight and would land in Vegas around midnight, plenty of time to make the 8:00 a.m. opening keynote. The sound check was at 7:00 a.m., so that left me seven hours to come up with my material (six if I wanted to take a shower and iron my suit). Gary gave me Jeff Hurt’s phone number so that I could call and introduce myself before I got there, since he had absolutely no idea who the hell I was or what I was going to talk about when I stood up in front of those conference attendees.
I called Jeff and told him a little bit about my background and about my various climbs, including the first American Women’s Everest Expedition. I then asked him the one most important question I needed an answer to in order for me to prepare an impactful presentation for his conference: “What message do you want the audience to walk away with after my keynote?” And Jeff answered, “Message? I don’t care what message you deliver, I just want to make sure that my audience isn’t furious about the fact that Carolyn Kepcher isn’t here.”
Of course there was absolutely nothing Carolyn could have done to get to the conference—when you’re hugging a toilet, you can’t get on a plane. But her untimely illness ended up giving me the idea for the messaging I would build my speech around that day. So for that—I thank her.
My challenge had been spelled out for me. I knew what I had to do. When I finally arrived at Mandalay Bay, Jeff Hurt was waiting out in front to meet me. I hopped out of the town car and he approached me and introduced himself. “Awwww, you didn’t have to wait up for me to arrive,” I told him.
“Uh, yes, I did!” he explained. “I just had a celebrity speaker cancel on me at the last minute. I wanted to make sure the replacement actually got here.”
Understandable. “I’m here. And don’t worry. I will make sure your audience is happy tomorrow morning.”
I wasn’t yet sure how I was going to make that happen. I figured spiking their coffee would be the best way, but I was fairly certain I couldn’t get the Mandalay Bay Convention Center’s catering staff on board with that. My other option was to head straight to my hotel room and spend the next five hours putting together a program that would surprise both the audience and my new best friend, Jeff Hurt. I was so grateful that he was giving me the opportunity to address his conference attendees. But the reality was that he had little choice. He had called every major speakers bureau in the country trying to get a celebrity replacement for Carolyn, and none of them could get him anyone on such short notice. Keppler Speakers was the bureau that had come up with someone, and that someone was me. I had no name recognition, which meant I was even more of a gamble for Jeff, who had no idea what to expect from me. He didn’t know my story (hell, I hadn’t even written my speech yet) and wasn’t familiar with my platform style (neither was I). As a conference planner, his reputation was on the line.
So I went to work. I sat alone in that hotel room, trying to figure out what I was going to do to win over the audience. All I knew was that six thousand people were expecting to hear Carolyn Kepcher in the morning, and it was up to me to deliver a presentation that would ensure they weren’t disappointed by her absence. I came up with what I thought was a pretty good plan and stayed up through dawn working on my slides. I did not get one single minute of sleep. I couldn’t. I had too much work to do, because I had committed to delivering—not a speech, but delivering on a promise to make sure the audience was satisfied with the program. I wanted to deliver on my mantra: Count on me.
Little did I know that this one presentation would alter the course of my career.
At 7:00 a.m., I made my way downstairs for the sound check and to load the slide deck I’d been up all night creating. All was in order. At 8:00 a.m. I walked out onto the stage and greeted the thousands of people who were expecting a tall, leggy blonde. First thing I did was break it to them that Carolyn had canceled at the last minute because she was sick, so they were now getting a short brunette. That was obvious, of course. No one threw rotten tomatoes (or if they did, none of them managed to hit the stage). I breathed a small sigh of relief.
Next thing I did was bring up a slide of Carolyn Kepcher’s photo along with her speech title, “Business Lessons Learned from The Apprentice.” Then I used animation to cross out Carolyn’s name, and I had “YOU’RE FIRED” (a phrase famously used at the end of each episode of her TV show) appear across the screen. I jokingly announced that Carolyn had just been “fired.” Then I showed her title slide changing from “Business Lessons Learned from The Apprentice” to “Business Lessons Learned from Climbing Mt. Everest.” Now the audience had a glimpse of what was coming.
I had Photoshopped pictures of Carolyn and Donald Trump into my slides, which showed the two of them climbing various mountains. I wanted to build them into my presentation, since the audience was expecting material that had something to do with The Apprentice. The main theme of my keynote: Be the person who always comes through. Be the person whom everyone can count on when times are most challenging. I even showed a photo of me with a huge grin on my face that was taken just after I had vomited all over myself at 24,000 feet on Mount Everest—and I talked about how, as a leader, you have to push through the toughest of times and show up with a good attitude and be there for your team. I said something to the effect of, “Even when you feel like puking you have to put a smile on your face and get out there and do your job, because it’s not about you—it’s about the people around you to whom you are accountable. So you need to keep pushing forward. Even when it hurts.” The audience reacted with cheers and applause. I spoke for an hour about leadership, teamwork, and how to adapt to a changing environment. Most of all, I talked about the importance of coming through for people when they are counting on you, no matter how difficult or painful or uncomfortable the situation might be.
At the end of my talk I got a rousing standing ovation. Not bad for my first big speech! But, man, what a way to cut my teeth as a keynote speaker. Jeff Hurt came rushing backstage to meet me after my speech and said, “Okay, you just knocked it out of the park. But I saw you arrive at one a.m., so how did you put that presentation together?”
I explained to him I had stayed up throughout the morning hours creating the slides and had yet to go to sleep.
He expressed his appreciation and said, “I can’t believe you would do that. I don’t know many people who would go to the lengths you did for this audience.”
“Of course I would do that,” I said. “Why would you expect anything less?”
He smiled and said, “Why have I never heard of you? No offense, but I must tell you that I had never heard your name before yesterday. None of the bureaus have ever mentioned you to me when I have been exploring options for speakers in the past.” Jeff had booked hundreds of speakers and wondered how it was possible that I wasn’t on his radar.
I explained my situation to him. “Confession. I cannot get the bureaus to talk to me. I have been trying for a year to get in the door with many of them, and very few will give me the time of day. I cannot even get these people to return my phone calls.”
Jeff said, “I work with every major speakers bureau in the country, and I am going to contact all of them and let them know what you did here this morning.”
At the end of the multiday program at Mandalay Bay, the attendees filled out evaluations. I somehow ended up as the highest-rated speaker at the conference. Jeff shared the survey results with me, and I was really pleased with the positive feedback from the audience. There was, however, one comment from an attendee that was not positive: “We should have been told about the replacement. It is obvious that Carolyn canceled a while ago. Alison’s presentation was not put together overnight. Communication is very important, and I am disappointed [the association] does not think the same.”
Whoever wrote that remark had meant it as a criticism of the association that sponsored the meeting, but I took it as the ultimate compliment.
Of course I could have just used a generic slide presentation that day instead of crafting something completely new, but it wouldn’t have had the impact that the customized presentation did. I wanted the audience to walk out of there with the feeling that there was nowhere else they would rather have been than in that room. I wanted to come through for my new team, which included Keppler Speakers, Jeff Hurt, and the six thousand other people who were in the room with me that morning. That’s the power of personal credo.
Just as I had come through for Jeff, he came through for me. He called all the major speakers bureaus around the country, and within one week agents were ringing my phone off the hook and asking me to send them my materials. Things took off from there.
My topics have transitioned over the years as I garnered additional leadership lessons from new expeditions. But regardless of the audience I am addressing, the message about the importance of always coming through for your team—even when you feel like puking—is always in there somewhere. I am now exclusively represented by a fabulous speakers bureau and address close to one hundred audiences a year.
Which bureau? Keppler Speakers, of course—the one bureau that was willing to give me a shot when no one else would.
If you are leading teams in extreme environments—because there is so much uncertainty involved—you must have the trust and loyalty of the people on your team. Follow through on your commitments, come hell or high water (or high altitude). People have to know that you will go to the mat for them. That builds trust and gives people confidence in your ability to lead. I strive to always be the person who comes through no matter what, on and off the mountain. And I am lucky to be surrounded by people who have the same sense of obligation. When you know someone would make great sacrifices for you when called upon, you are more likely to make great sacrifices in return. And that’s one way that great teams are built.