Why Everyone Should Pay Attention to the Market Basket Case

I think what is happening at Market Basket is an indication of an incredibly deep rooted sociological upheaval that is happening everywhere. But you have to look hard to see it.

Like the underground coal mine fire of Centralia Pa, evidence of this “happening” can be seen as seemingly unrelated puffs of smoke that are appearing as things like The Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, The Tea Party; the breakdown of our bureaucratic educational systems; the push back against command and control leadership methods and in the Market Basket case.

What is happening and what is causing it to happen?

At the mega level I think we are witnessing the beginning of end of the age of institutionalism and the dawn of the age of entrepreneurialism. Entrepreneurialism is being defined in this case as the individuality, creativity and freedom of the individual.

Throughout history powerful institutions have been in conflict with individuals to determine who will reap the benefits from the creative mind power and manpower the individual possesses.

On one side of this conflict are governments, large institutions and bureaucracies, mega-corporations and financial institutions. One the other side are the individualists, business owners, the young and all those fighting for self determination and respect.

In the past, with few exceptions, the institutions have dominated. That is all changing now, albeit slowly and not without disruption(s).

The individual is mounting a serious challenge against the institution and it is a global happening.

While we are in the earliest stages of what will most assuredly be a decades long struggle for dominance, the battle lines are clearly drawn. The changing conditions of the last 40 years of the 20th century and the emerging conditions of the 21st century have determined the time for this struggle to start in earnest is now.  

This shift started when the Silent Generation of the 40's and 50's raised the Baby Boomers, who then raised the X'ers who are now raising the Millenials.

Each of these generations have raised children who are more independent thinking and who have more expectations of getting their way than the preceding generations. As a result while the Boomers fought for their independence and expectations, the X'ers expected them and now the Millenials demand them! 

As a result we now have three of the most educated, independent minded and empowered generations in the history of humanity either coming of age or already there.

Add to this sociological shift the fact the highly empowering, mind bending advances in technology that have occurred just within the last 10 years and you have a formula for independence, empowerment and mobility and freedom of the individual unlike anything ever experienced. 

Welcome to the age of entrepreneurialism. 

This is where the sparks that are fueling the fire that is beginning to burn and spread everywhere have begun, especially in the workplace. We now have three generations of workers who are not willing to simply give up majority control of their creative mind power or valuable muscle power without being respected, compensated or having a say in how either are used. 

Yet that is not how big businesses, government or institutions think. This individualism is a threat to their stability and to their ability to mine the human resources they need. This competition for control is creating conflict.

Which brings us back to the Market Basket case.

Market Basket was a very forward thinking company with a great culture. They enjoyed high levels of employee engagement and profit levels. Until very recently the CEO, and creator of the culture, was the beloved Arthur T.

Other family members were involved at the board level who didn’t agree with Arthur T’s management style. Enter Arthur S. Arthur S. is an old school, command and control, industrial age capitalist.

Arthur S. could be called an institutionalist and Arthur T could be called an entrepreneurialist. Well Arthur S ended up gaining control of the board and fired Arthur T. You could view this as a peaceful and free tribe being taken over by a competing tribal warlord.

 

This has set off a firestorm of protest from the workforce who loved their company, their culture and their tribal leader. Market Basket is now in a spiraling out of control and losing altitude fast.

If this were 50 or even 15 years ago workers would have simply adjusted the yokes on their necks, put their heads down and plowed ahead wistfully remembering the days when they were respected and their tribe prospered.

That is not what happened. Workers from the front office to the front line have joined in solidarity against what they view as an oppressive regime and a cutural regression.

They stood up for themselves. They stood up for their colleagues. They stood up for their principles. Then, after standing up, they walked in a show of solidarity that Norma Rae's could only dream about. 

In true entrepreneurial fashion, they put everything at risk and chose their principles over their paychecks. 

In response the institutionalists responded with power and force by firing key executives and threatening both managers and workers who dared challenge their authority.

The fired executives left their office and joined their colleagues on the picket lines. They were welcomed like the respected tribal leaders they are.

So, by eliminating a beloved CEO in order to get more productivity out of their people and more profits out of customers the new managers are losing both.

While it is too early to tell who will win this battle there is no doubt that the Age of Entrepreneurialism is here to stay. 

This is not to say that large companies and institutions will go away. But if they are to thrive or even survive in the modern age their leaders must change their corporate culture to fit the modern culture and the modern workforce it has created.

They will have to face the Age of Entrepreneurialism of face the consequences. The people are speaking.

Conflict Resolution - It's Not for Sissies!!

Conflicts....ugh.

What a pain. What a fact of life.

They happen a lot and if not caught early what starts out as a simple, localized brush fire can quickly intensify in heat and spread to infect others nearby.

In fact, few things go viral faster than a conflict. Left unchecked the numbers involved rapidly expand from the two combatants to include many others as people are recruited to take sides, or naturally join in to support their friends.

Much like the feud between the Hatfield's and McCoy's side battles between the members of the opposing teams erupt and expand the number conflicts from one to many. The next thing you know there are side skirmishes going on that even the original combatants can't control. All being driven by emotionally based issues such as righteousness, justice, and vengeance, which justify more conflict.

And while few spread that far, almost all spread to a degree. And just like a wild fire has "hot spots" that simmer long after the original fire is put out, these secondary skirmishes must be dealt with as well. Otherwise they can reignite with little prompting and you are back in damage control mode, over and over again.

This is why workplace conflicts become immense drains on productivity and profits. All the focus is on the infighting and paybacks instead of productivity.

Left unchecked they threaten the culture and survival of the entire organization in ways that are irreversible, unless you replace some of the players.

What a shame. What a waste. All because a brush fire turned into an inferno.

That is why, when faced with a conflict, the single most important thing for you to focus upon is YOU!! Not them.

Why you? Because you are the one who has to remain calm in the center of the emotional firestorm. As Wayne Dyer observed: "Conflict cannot survive without your participation."

In other words, one cannot resolve a conflict if they are infected with the energy of conflict.

Plus people in conflict are often in "fight or flight" mode and are typically extremely wary of others who seek to get involved. Because they are in a survival mode they often see "friends" as enemies and can attack you as you are coming in to help.

So, you must be prepared for that and expect to take some heat, even burned a bit, as you seek to put the emotional fires out. Because if you catch fire there is no one left to put the fire out.

In the art of conflict resolution, the old adage of fighting fire with fire simply never works.

Ronald Reagan may have said it best when he stated: "Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means."

This is not an easy stance to take, let alone maintain. Which is why people who can master the ability to remain calm, centered and focused as they wade into the emotional firestorms that conflicts stir up are so valuable to the health of organizations.

As you learn to suit up and fireproof yourself in order to help others return to their peaceful state you gain a very important added benefit. You find that the processes you have learned to help others to get out of their conflicts serve you extremely well when dealing with ones that involve you.

So, center yourself, steel yourself and prepare to take a shot or two on the way in. But hold the higher ground; be a stand for a mature resolution to the matter and be a stand for a healthy culture that uses its conflicts to make it stronger.

The valuable life lessons you will learn will serve you and those you seek to serve during times when they need you the most.

Three Forms of Excellence Leaders Must Recognize or Risk Failure

Of all the human experiences we get to have, being in the presence of, or achieving, excellence in its true form, is one of the most inspiring of all. 

As leaders we have the responsibility to, and are paid to, recognize, promote and achieve excellence, both in ourselves and in others. 

To that end we create countless mission statements and corporate communications that promise to deliver it; state our dedication to it and call forth all employees to fulfill exemplify it. Then we set out to achieve it.

But we have a problem. No one can definitively define "excellence". 

As a word "excellence" is subjective and relative. Yet when you witness or achieve it, it becomes palpable. It has substance and meaning. It moves people to action. Excellence is as real as it is nebulous.

So as a leader of the modern workforce we find ourselves in a perplexing conundrum. We have to achieve something we can't clearly define otherwise we get passed by those who are achieving it, knowingly or unknowingly. 

We also have to inspire people to aspire to and rise to this mystical level of achievement, then recognize them appropriately when they do so or pay the price of reduced employee engagement. Not an easy task.

Now, I am not promising to define the undefinable in this article. I am not that bright. But I have identified some of the places where excellence resides. And since we know it when we see it, knowing where to look for it increases our chances of finding and fostering it.

Excellence is an Opinion

One way to describe excellence is that it is simply an opinion about a level of achievement that an individual or a group has agreed is so superior to the norm that it is deserving of special acknowledgement.

The source of these opinions vary but almost all are based upon levels of accomplishment that have occurred in the past, and often by others outside of the group. Think: "Industry standards of excellence" awards.

However, some of these opinions are based upon what someone thinks should be achievable even though they have no documentation to support their theory. Pushing those opinions, especially if unachievable, can be very damaging to a team.

Three Types of Excellence  

It could be argued that there are three basic types of excellence: 

Internal

External 

Conditions Based

Internal Excellence speaks to those accomplishments that require the person to face and overcome challenges requiring them to demonstrate significant levels of discipline or personal growth. The impact of this growth often serves to redefine themselves to themselves and to others.

This form of excellence is humanistic and/or spiritual in nature. It affects many aspects of one's life.

Achievements of Internal Excellence must be graded on a scale based upon the individual’s starting point, ending point and the level of personal difficulty they experienced along the way.

Beware though, because these achievements are “internal” they may not be visible to those on the "outside". So the person in question might stretch themselves and overcome significant challenges, thereby achieving excellence, yet they can go unrecognized. This lack of recognition can create an attitude of: “Why should I try so hard if no one cares?”

Paradoxically, while this type of excellence is very personal it is not always visible to the person achieving it. They simply may not realize the level of accomplishment they just achieved in comparison to their starting point because, as the saying goes: "It is difficult to read the label from the inside of the bottle."

In both cases it is important as their leader that you know them well enough to see and then acknowledge their excellence. Doing so inspires them to seek to achieve excellence more often.

  

External Excellence refers to accomplishments that are less about personal transformation and more about using and leveraging one’s capabilities and resources to achieve goals defined as being excellent.

External achievements are more easily seen and therefore are more acknowledged by others. These can range from achieving high levels of success in areas of career, education, production, creativity, etc.

While equal in stature and importance, achieving External Excellence does not always require the individual to overcome great personal challenges. This is not meant to diminish the importance of this form of excellence. It is to sound a warning bell. 

If leaders over-acknowledge External Excellence that does not require Internal Excellence it is possible to stifle the growth of the individual in question. Even though the group may be inspired to greater achievements  the individual's ego may become over inflated. And they may actually not feel the need to achieve more than what is coming easy to them.

Take for instance the natural athlete or the musical prodigy who’s starting point may be defined as “excellent” to others but which really represents a small percentage of what they are truly capable of achieving for themselves.

These gifted individuals pose special challenges for leaders in that they require the leader to reset their own “opinions” of excellence to a set of standards that they may never have seen accomplished before, yet are achievable for that individual. 

While this customization may appear to be creating a double standard in reality it is merely taking a firm stand for the true meaning of excellence as well as for that gifted individual.

An example of a leader who was challenged in this area and succeeded would be Michael Phelps' coach: Bob Bowman.

 Conditions Based Excellence takes the internal and external achievements into account, then factors in “conditions” as part of the formula that determines whether or not excellence has been achieved.

Think of Conditions Based Excellence as grading on a curve that measures the individuals' performance relative to the conditions in which they had to operate. We routinely acknowledge Conditions Based Excellence when using phrases like: “Well under the circumstances she/he did amazingly well.”

As an example, someone swimming 100 yards may not represent either an Internal or External form of excellence, however, if the person did it with two broken arms in a rip tide, such an accomplishment would be viewed as “beyond excellent!”

  

The opposite could be true as well. It is possible that conditions become so favorable that what once would be considered a great accomplishment can suddenly become a “can’t miss.” In those circumstances it would not be proper to treat such an accomplishment as an example of excellence. 

For instance, a generally agreed upon level of excellence might be for a young person of modest means to have $100,000.00 in the bank before the age of thirty. However, if that level of savings was all that was left from a $200 million PowerBall lottery, all of a sudden that accomplishment is not so excellent. In fact, that "achievement" could be viewed as a dismal failure!

Conclusion:

The point of all of this is that in order for us, as leaders, to accurately acknowledge and reward excellence we must become very familiar with the individual(s) we are leading and the conditions under which they are working.

We must commit to being a steward of and a torchbearer for preserving and protecting the essence of what "excellence" truly is for you and your team. Do not allow excellence to be diluted or your teams to become delusional.

When you do this well the organization fortunate enough to have you in their ranks prospers and profits. So do you, both personally and professionally. 

Just imagine how Bob Bowman felt when he was bearing witness to the level of excellence he helped to unleash for the world to see. Then imagine how much money he will make for the rest of his career! 

Michael wins, Bob wins and we all get to be amazed and inspired by it all. The way I see it, there is no downside to his whole "In Search of Excellence" stuff; as long as you know where to search.

Jeffrey S. Deckman is an expert at developing leaders, management teams and cultures designed to excel in the Knowledge Economy. He is available for Executive Coaching, Consulting, Training and Public Speaking engagements. 
He can be reached at JDeckman@CapabilityAccelerators.com. www.CapabilityAccelerators.com