It’s obvious to most people that more and more people have lost faith in what used to be called traditional values: devotion to country, family, church, and community. Many cynics now view behavior that once signified spiritual health, moral strength and good citizenship as a dog whistle for white supremacy or jingoistic nationalism. Many critics not only have abandoned but oppose what seemed unimpeachable codes of behavior and sentiment only half a century ago.
This decline, viewed through the lens of the media, often looks dramatic, even decadent.
Reactions to a fairly recent Wall Street Journal survey seem to confirm this dark vision of American culture. Conducted with the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, the Journal found, for example, that just under 40 percent of Americans considered patriotism and religion “very important.” The percentages were down by nearly half compared to those reported in 1998. Tolerance for others was considered “very important” for 58 percent of respondents, down from 80 percent in 1998. And in general, younger respondents were far more cynical and apathetic than older ones.
All of this sounds disheartening. The skepticism of younger people would seem to bode ill for the future.
Not so fast, says Jim Geraghty. In a March podcast from National Review’s The Editors, he pointed out that many of those who didn’t assess traditional values as “very important” actually considered them “somewhat very” or simply “somewhat” important. So, the decline is a bit less dramatic than it sounds from the way it’s been reported. The best way to sum up the WSJ survey: most Americans believe in country, family and God, but a little less confidently than they did in the past.
If you include all the different levels of “important,” then 90 percent of Americans consider hard work and tolerance for others essential, to some degree. More than 80 percent value community involvement the same way: patriotism, 73 percent; marriage, 70 percent; and parenthood, 65 percent.
So, alarm may not be justified. Concern, though, is certainly in order. The survey results aren’t grounds for despair, but the thoughtful reader may detect the faint song of a canary in the coal mine.
The private sector needs to hear that song and take action. Values need to be strong where they matter most: in the workplace, where people spend the majority of their waking hours during their productive years. What people experience in the workplace will color their entire outlook on the world. Are you treated fairly and respectfully by your manager? Are the leaders of your company honest? Do they compensate you fairly and adequately? All these factors will fan or extinguish the flame of one’s allegiance to country, family, and community.
In my books The Source of Success, The Constant Choice and Capitalists Arise!, I’ve been advocating for different facets of stakeholder capitalism for nearly twenty years. Central to this business model is the importance of employee and customer satisfaction. In the past quarter century, more and more American businesses have been re-embracing this organizational model. It’s working beautifully in dozens of companies now. These firms personalize customer relationships by creating a work environment where creativity and devotion to individual customer delight become the drivers of market penetration and customer retention.
Only an adherence to fundamental values from the top down will foster this kind of cheerfully prolific work environment: honesty, fairness, respect, and a willingness to drive decision-making down to the lowest practical levels. These organizations are aligned to honor all employees with a sense of responsibility for customer delight: empower them to improve operations, recognize them for what they achieve, and reward them accordingly.
This way of doing business refuses to treat employees and customers as pawns on a chessboard. They are the business. They originate new ideas, new services and products, as well as incremental improvements that build customer loyalty. When management respects employees and recognizes them for their creative contributions, they become a highly motivated engine for continuous improvement in products, services, processes and methods. And cynicism evaporates when a company’s workforce begins to bubble with a creative ferment devoted to delight. People start to love what they do. They behave toward one another with caring cooperation and partnership.
They become people who believe in their company and the country and community where it operates. I’ve written before about C.H.I Overhead Doors, a small Midwestern manufacturing firm. Its story is especially salient here. Over seven years, under the guidance of Peter Stavros, co-CEO at KKR
KKR
What may be most remarkable about this story is how much time and money Stavros devoted to this prep work. It took a couple of years simply to get to the first stage: winning the trust and loyalty of employees. This patience and faith in future success strikes me as something extremely rare. Most businesses wouldn’t have the courage to risk it.
When KKR showed up in 2015, they announced a stock ownership program. They wanted everyone to have a stake, to be an owner. They assured employees they would get new training, be consulted on major decisions, and be generally expected to be self-starting leaders in all positions. The workers didn’t believe any of it. For two years, Stavros kept at it. He polled employees: what do they need to have a satisfactory work environment? He said KKR would invest a million in plant improvements. Again, they didn’t believe it. When pressed, they said they wanted new air conditioning. They got it: and it cost more quite a bit more than a million. What next? They wanted a better cafeteria with better food. They got it. Even after all this investment in their well-being, employees still didn’t have the levels of trust and engagement that KKR would have liked. But it was good enough to begin implementing Japanese principles of continuous improvement: kaizen. Workers were given much greater authority to implement changes to benefit the company. They were recognized and rewarded. They began believing in the new system and their leaders when they saw the results.
In the crowning achievement of this company redesign, workers and management devised a new sequence for manufacturing doors, built around delivery logistics. It cut the time from order to delivery so dramatically no other company could keep up. C.H.I. was weeks ahead of the nearest competitor. Market share and profits shot up.
C.H.I. Overhead Doors is now a market leader, with vastly increased profits and strong employee retention, loyalty and engagement. Over seven years, investors at KKR and the many public pension funds they support made ten times their original investment in this garage door company.
The employees were compensated beyond their wildest dreams as larger and larger dividends went into their pockets. They had become a team, and they believed. When KKR sold the company, employees were given bonuses proportionate to their tenure at the company. Some of those bonuses were in the seven figures. All bonuses were far larger than anyone had expected. It was an astonishingly joyful moment.
In the video of that award ceremony, you can see in the faces of every employee an incredulous delight at what they all did, how they turned their little firm into a highly profitable model of traditional values: hard work, innovation, respect, fairness, generosity, and teamwork. They aren’t just dazzled by the rewards of their effort; you can see in their faces that they know the American system can work for everyone. They realize that they have been employed by people who care not only about their productivity but also their well-being, welfare, and future. They are respected and valued as human beings, not just for their labor but their minds, hearts, and individual identities.
This is what America needs. Employers who aren’t sure about stakeholder capitalism should take note of how a weakening of faith in traditional values has begun to spread. The best way to counteract it is to adopt the principles used at this little garage door maker and restore the average worker’s faith in the company, community, and the American system itself.
When you boil down this concept, it’s all about the power of intrapreneurship. The power of having a stake in the operation of a business and a stake in the results an individual’s actions help generate. Work satisfaction will spread to the family and to the community. Obviously, a system and a country supporting such efforts will be worth an individual’s loyalty and pride. Stakeholder capitalism, properly integrated into the workplace, can do all that!
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