NBC – Matt Lauer
Miramax – Harvey Weinstein
Where in the world is Harvey, Kevin and Matt? I’m not sure but it seems like a lot of people are looking for them. In fact, these 3 men are among the top 5 most searched US people on Google for all of 2017. What’s even more fascinating is that their stories just broke in the news as late as October and now everyone is searching for more information on who are these people really, not the public personas we thought we knew.
It seems that people are trying to figure out – why these men who seemed to have it all – traded their reputation, finances, career and character for bad behavior and lack of good judgment? An even bigger “why” causes us to look at, why were they allowed to continue in their roles with these alleged violations against company policy, culture and values, while top management looked the other way, if they indeed, were aware of the problems? And, most importantly, is top management now questioning “why” the signs and warnings, about these employees, were ignored. What’s the cost of this fallout?
If the reasons that these men were allowed to stay on within these organizations, even negotiating bigger and bigger contracts during these years, were dollar signs first, that may have been a poor decision in retrospect. While these powerful men were bringing in huge revenue streams to the organizations that they worked for then, this exposure will now cost them millions of dollars and more to resolve all the issues from this fallout.
Unfortunately, these companies aren’t alone. In fact, since October 2017, 122 new cases of high powered men, accused of sexual harassment, from multiple complainants, have just been uncovered. So why? And why now?
The answer: “The Harvey Weinstein Effect.” And now these men are joining a long list people behaving badly from the political figures, to entertainment to other companies who are seeing the writing on the wall that. They’re beginning to recognize that with social media and the like, transparency is everywhere. What happens in Vegas, doesn’t stay in Vegas – to borrow from the current sentiments of that town.
When these incidents of sexual harassment, bad social conduct, and inappropriate behaviors are exposed, what happens next isn’t too pretty and often very costly. Crises management experts recommend that CMO’s and CCO’s own the issue, make a statement or else it will be made by someone else. That’s good advice, especially if the truth is that these incidents were pervasive, consistent and well-known inside the organization and also being ignored for years. Legal experts are recommending to work with HR to dig deeper into other allegations and script messages when allegations leak; others are suggesting to “double down” on harassment-prevention training for everyone to show compliance and action-taking measures as a solid step in the right direction.
Is it that we really don’t have enough sexual harassment training and if we simply “double up” on the training, all will be well and we’ll cure the issue? Or, is it that the “pink elephant” in the company is being ignored?
A different theory from Aaron Kwittken, contributing editor of Forbes, self-proclaimed, “the good, the bad and the ugly of how brands communicate” advises companies to encourage a culture of accountability, humanity awareness, and, if you see something, say something – much like the NY metro motto that was adopted in reaction to making everyone responsible for being vigilant after the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. It’s consider it a duty of the employee, as a human being, to be the guardian of the brand–to uphold the brand and what it stands for.
Another fine suggestion is to fix the culture, speak up and help. Interestingly enough, on the ground level and even up to the management level, it appears that people, especially many women, were speaking up yet being ignored. It seemed that there was even retribution for those who did speak up in certain situations.
Sexual harassment isn’t the only recent “bad behavioral and cultural issue” problems we’ve heard of recently. This summer was packed full of more “bad boy violations’. Uber fired key executives after various incidents of, not only sexual harassment, but also unfair discrimination against women engineers, stealing intellectual property from Google, and the list goes on. American and United Airlines had publically exposed events exhibiting bad behavior towards its passengers. Wells Fargo joined the “bad boys club” when they opened 3.5 million unauthorized accounts that exposed fraud in this area of the organization in response to unrealistic sales goals. They even under-reported the number of accounts by 1.4 million less than the actual number until an audit revealed more.
In one of these incidents, a spokesperson alluded that the employees and management “were not connected to the company values.” Interestingly enough, some of these companies didn’t appear to display their core values and if they did have them, they were very difficult to find. Perhaps the employees didn’t even know what their company values were. In looking back at both the sexual harassment issues and the “bad behaviors,” is there a common underlying issue that could explain these problems? It’s my belief, and research proves*, when there is a disconnect between a company’s values and what management exhibits, rewards, punishes or overlooks, it will be reflected in the company culture and affect its profits.
Lisa Wheaton, Chief People Officer at GL Group, and contributor to Forbes Councils, states that our company culture needs to be continually checking its pulse and putting in continuous effort to keep things running in line with its values. She continues, that just like the human body, if you feed it poorly, stop going to the gym, don’t properly nourish it, even though you may not see the immediate results of a cheeseburger now and again, or skipping weeks at the gym, this consistent poor input will eventually lead to bigger issues that will seem to come out of nowhere.
If you think about your company culture as it is now, are you nourishing it or feeding it junk and allowing it to run on autopilot? While no culture is perfect, there will always be situations, as we discussed earlier here, that will need attention and adjusting. Culture cannot be bought and it is not a “set and forget” line item. When that happens, Lisa continues, she encourages businesses not to focus solely on the issue(s) but rather to focus on responding in a way that continues to build what you believe in.
So in the case of the sexual harassment, being reactive and protecting your legal butt by “doubling up” on the sexual harassment training probably isn’t the solution. Sure the training can create an awareness but I’d challenge you to see the results of that training “outing” the offenders of the policy or even curing those who might recognize they are the offenders. For most companies, it’s just a band-aide approach or a placebo at best. It creates the allure that we’re taking responsibility or, this will “check the box’ of proof to cover our legal issues if something occurs.
Not so. If you provide the training, and, the employees and management, observes the policy being broken by top executives, or anybody in the organization, and nothing is being done to “fix the real problem”, then it was truly a band-aide covering up the real underlying issues. You wasted everyone’s time and no one is taking it seriously. It’s the lack of taking the hard stand of firing the offender, if warranted, and penalizing those who don’t honor the company’s policies, values and culture.
In the case of one of these companies, it appears now that it was known that Matt Lauer had several incidents of inappropriate behavior. However, if you look at the two NBC values of Diversity and Inclusion these weren’t being enforced…especially the section around “presenting positive role models”. Most would assume that it was that Matt Lauer’s position as host of the Today Show that drove huge revenue dollars from advertising. If executives only looked at it from this perspective, it probably made sense that they, or any other organization who’s concerned about their profitability factor, would worry about a fall out from losing a top employee. It might even give them implied permission to look the other way. At least until that practice actually cost them more money than it was generating and put them at great financial risk. Therefore, their core value of providing positive role models wasn’t being honored and even more importantly, it was being ignored.
This is happening in the political arena too when the offending politicians boldly deny allegations and continue collecting their paycheck. Until the public puts significant pressure on the offending party to resign, the politician stand strong and some times even with their party backing them.
Finally, only under extreme public pressure will they retreat. These are the lawmakers that are creating legislation for the public but somehow hold themselves above it all. If these organizations with sexual harassment offenders, bad social behaviors, fraud and more, have core values, then doesn’t it seem true that most of them are likely ignoring their company core values, culture and policies?
Maybe values statements should be written like: “We enforce our values of “X, Y & Z” when we feel it doesn’t impact our bottom-line”. It would continue like this: “However, once our revenue is no longer being impacted, then we’ll go back to our values”. And yet the total opposite is actually the truth. The organizations with the offenders are now exposed, will be subject to fines, penalties, lower advertising revenue, legal cases, etc. That alone will affect their bottom line for years to come. Either you have values and live by them, hire by them and fire by them or you just have the plaque on the wall and it’s a façade and every employee knows it. If that’s the case, then why have the values at all? The reason companies adopt values is to define and communicate “how things are done around here” and “how we behave when no one is looking”. But if top management ignores the values, then no one will honor them. These companies will have to decide moving forward whether they are going to honor their values or remove them from their company’s manifesto. Or they can just leave them on the plaques and continue to ignore them until the next wave of offenders pop up and they will.
For those companies that truly are ready to take a long hard look at their values, get real about the ones they believe in and are willing to live by, should also revisit their mission and vision statements. There has to be a buy-in from everyone in the organization as to how we’re going to do things differently and be guided by our values to drive our culture. The questions that needs to be answered are: “Why” as an organization are we here and “Why” do we matter to our employees and customers? They need to take those authentic answers and start taking actions every day that align with their truth from those answers of “why” they exist and who why serve.
Those are the organizations will not only prosper but create a win/win/win for themselves, their customers, their employees and to make the world a better place. www.winatbusinesscoaching.com
