This week, we’re doing something new – turning over our newsletter to a dear friend and client whom I had the privilege to serve as a consultant many decades ago. He recently shared a story about something he did back then that I think is very moving and profound. He gave me permission to reprint his story, but he’d prefer to remain anonymous. Still, I can say that at the time he was serving as COO of a global company and was in the process of driving a massive organizational culture change effort. This story is about one of the things he did to help drive that change forward.
Back in the mid-1990’s, after I had been in the COO role for about a year, it became clear that we were finally starting to turn the corner and pick up speed in addressing many of our primary cultural issues including underperformance, miscommunication, and turnover. The overall team was now living our message that yes indeed, ‘something’s gotta change,’ and in fact many people, at every level, were already reaching well beyond what they thought was possible to achieve.
It was, however, before we had formalized and implemented our skills, career, and manager development program, and I was looking for a way to reward people who had truly excelled. So, I was able to scrape together enough funding to provide some meaningful, yet select, bonuses to the people we called, “The Top 50” – to be decided together with my management team. (You’ll recall we’re a big company and these 50 people only represented about 5% of the overall operations group. As much as I wanted to do more for more people, my budget was limited.)
Instead of just handing each of them a check, I needed a way to demonstrate to the recipients that I, as the COO, had taken time to really understand the work they had done and how they had excelled. So, on a very long, multi-leg flight from the US to India, I decided I would write – by hand – each of them a letter on my personal letterhead thanking them for their efforts, highlighting how they were visibly helping to lead the way for others and identifying specifics of their outstanding performance.
To help me do this I had asked my management team to summarize the top examples from everyone’s performance reports and create a file for me, containing copies of each persons’ reports for the year, so that I could review them on my PC during the flight. I knew it would take a lot of my time to do this, but I also strongly believed that my handwritten letter could have a substantially positive impact on these people and others in the company.
So, instead of reading, watching movies, or sleeping during my 15+ hours of flying and layovers, I wrote these letters using an old-fashioned fountain pen – to let the recipients see the occasional ink blotches and imperfections of my handwriting – just so they understood that this was not a form letter.
When I returned from my trip, the letters and checks were sent out. And, since some of the recipients were part of my management team, I encouraged them to hand write their own individual personal notes or letters to their teams, letting them know how much they appreciated what they had done the past year. Of course, what I was trying to do by example was demonstrate the culture we were looking to establish and make this a normalized type of activity.
I can honestly say that the combination of the bonuses (the first ever given to a “back office” team) and handwritten letters clearly had the intended effect. We saw measurable and long-term increases in morale, productivity, and retention across the board.
Many years later, after I’d left the COO role, I was in our West Coast office, and I had a problem with my PC requiring me to personally take my laptop to the “IT window” for them to resolve the issue. When I got there, the technician staffing the window was new to the company, but when she asked me for my name she turned around to her supervisor/manager and called out, “Hey, I think the guy who used to be the COO is here, because I remember you telling me about him.”
Her manager came over and turned out to be one of ‘Top 50’ to whom I had given a bonus and sent a handwritten letter all those years earlier. We exchanged greetings and chatted for a while and then he said, “You know, I still remember when you sent out those bonus checks enclosed with a personal handwritten letter. That was something I will never forget. In fact, I still have the letter you sent and go back and read it occasionally. And, while I really appreciated the bonus money, it was actually the letter that meant more to me (and to the others who got them) than the check.”
My response to him was that I was very pleased it had that kind of impact. Then I asked him that since he was now a manager, did he ever hand write notes to people who worked for him to show his appreciation. “Absolutely!” he said, “I do it a lot. What you did made me feel unique and appreciated, especially because we all knew how busy you were, and what you gave with these letters was the most valuable thing you could – your time, and that you cared enough to actually read our performance reports.”
Bingo, I thought; small, thoughtful gestures do in fact make a real difference in people’s lives and work; and they pay it forward. And that, I think, is what Respectful Leadership is all about. Right?
Right.
By A. Former COO
