Michael Lee Stallard: Boosting connection culture and output

Leaders can motivate employees by promoting bonds based on shared identity

It’s typical for people working in cultures of control and indifference to develop learned hopelessness where they feel their opinions and actions don’t matter so they give up and just try to survive in order to protect their jobs. Such  an approach sabotages the organisation’s productivity with sub-par employee performance.

Organisations can address such issues by fostering what is called connection culture. Connection is a bond based on shared identity, empathy and understanding that moves individuals toward group-centred membership. A connection culture is created and maintained when leaders communicate an inspiring vision, value people and give them a voice. Few leaders do this well.

One leader who created and maintained a connection culture was Admiral Vern Clark, the US chief of naval operations (CNO) from 2000 until his retirement in 2005. The CNO is the principal naval adviser to the President on the conduct of war. When Clark assumed the CNO role, the navy was not performing at its best. One metric that shows the navy’s culture was not inspiring performance excellence is enlisted sailor retention which had fallen to half of the navy’s goal of 38 per cent. Given the sophistication of the navy’s tech systems, including nuclear power and weapons systems, having high-quality, motivated personnel is essential to maximising productivity and minimising defects and accidents.

To begin with, Admiral Clark made sailors feel proud to be in the navy. He said the navy’s mission is to take the “war fighting readiness” of the US to any corner of the world at a moment’s notice and it was “our turn to make history” by “building a navy for the 21st century” that would be “strategically and operationally agile, technologically and organisationally innovative, networked at every level, highly joint (with the other services), and effectively integrated with allies”. 

Second, Clark made each sailor feel valued. He described his strategy as using the navy’s “asymmetrical advantages” of the “best technology in the world” combined with the “genius of our people.” When navy budget officials proposed cuts related to training and developing people as part of the annual planning cycle, Clark wouldn’t allow it. Instead, he increased the training budget. He strongly supported an increase in pay that was approved by the President and Congress. He increased the training budget to support personal and professional growth.

Clark changed legacy systems that made sailors feel devalued. One such system was the navy’s job assignment process. Under Clark and a programme he dubbed “the revolution in personnel distribution,” the system was changed to a job bidding approach with incentive compensation provided to the jobs and locations that were in the least demand. As a result, the percentage of sailors forced into positions or locations they didn’t want was reduced from 30 per cent to around 1.5 per cent.

Finally, Admiral Clark made everyone feel like they had a voice in most decisions. He encouraged participants to speak up. His own approachable, conversational speaking style set the tone for others to share their ideas and opinions. He asked everyone to “challenge every assumption,” “be data driven,” and “drill down” into the details. He challenged them to “have a sense of urgency to make the navy better every day” in order to deliver greater efficiencies and readiness for the dollars America invested in the navy.

Michael Lee Stallard, Co-founder and President of E Pluribus Partners