Taking the “West Point” Approach

While we may be able to throw enough marketing dollars around to ensure our brand has an extended reach, the consequences of not consistently modeling our core organizational values - for our team and everyone we hope to reach - won’t stop at dealing with broken milkshake machines. Leaders failing to provide a strong example will not only struggle to rally our team around the values printed in the handbook, but they’ll also impact the way clients interact with the business - sooner or later… As leaders, though, we can avoid all of that. That choice, however, will not be the path of least resistance.

My first direct interaction with a man who’s made a tremendous impact on my life over the 25+ years since was in January 1998. I had heard tales of a character named Terry Ward for several months before that but never met him personally. Terry covered two of the sixteen hours involved with the behavior-based safety training I was squirming through. The content he covered taught me a lot about human behavior but his delivery left an even bigger impression. Being from Massachusetts and having recently left the United States Army, his approach was a bit different than anyone I had experienced to that point in my life. If someone yawned, which is nearly impossible to avoid when putting a dozen press operators in a training room for two straight days, he’d throw a candy bar at them. He was nothing short of intense, and I had no idea at the time how much he’d sew into my life over the decades that followed.

Terry’s topic during those two hours was the role consequences have in how each of us choose our behaviors. Rather than attempting to cover all that here, I’ll stick with the part that still resonates with me today. Terry rarely talks about himself; he’s incredibly humble. But through a quick story during that session, he shared what was instilled in him during his time at the United States Military Academy. He said one of the primary tenants that was drilling into him was the importance of consistently choosing the harder right over the easier wrong. He went on to explain that choosing a safe behavior would always be harder, requiring more time at a minimum, than performing a task in a way that created more risk. He’s rarely mentioned his West Point experience since but that single reference was enough.

As leaders, we’ll have that same choice regarding how we do (or don’t) model the core values of our organization. On any given day, it will be far easier to skirt the edges or justify how our choices are good enough. Eventually though, failing to choose the harder right will permeate the team around, impact the clients we should be serving at the highest level possible and the community we’re a part of. From there, it’s only a matter of time until going with the easier wrong takes a toll on our company’s reputation as well as our bottom line results. We’ll look at that more soon. Before that though, we’ll work through some simple steps we can each take to exemplify our values for our clients and community.