1975-1995. I worked for a Fortune 50 multi-national corporation, starting as a Customer Service Rep (CSR) going out to clients to trouble-shoot and fix their computer hardware. I then moved to teaching other CSRs how to do the same as well as how to be their best selves individually and professionally. I continued through a marketing stint and then back to corporate training as a project leader and Manager of Training.

I left the company that started out promising guaranteed employment until retirement because my division was sold to another company – twice. Corporate culture and employee benefits changed. Core values changed. The new work environment – as well as the business environment overall – was not in 1995 as it was in 1975.

So what was it that changed so drastically that a company I would have essentially given my entire professional life to no longer engendered such loyalty?

The earlier company culture was such that I was taught, practiced, and rewarded for ownership of my piece of the company. No, not through stock – although I did acquire a minute number of shares over the years. It was not the salary – although I was paid well in salary, benefits, and small bonuses for exceeding performance goals. It was that I was taught from the very start that although I was one of between 300-to-400 thousand employees, what I did, mattered, and I had the responsibility to treat my part of the company / my territory as if it was my own business. I felt valued and respected; that I mattered in the scheme of the business. I felt that I contributed in however small way it must have been as one in hundreds of thousands.

Leadership reinforced my value providing opportunities to contribute ideas with direct feedback as to whether my ideas were heard and considered, regardless of actual implementation. I saw enough solid proof that colleagues’ ideas were implemented and they received compensation of sorts for their ideas.
The company slogans included words like, “RESPECT FOR THE INDIVIDUAL”, “[Company Name] MEANS SERVICE”, and “THINK”. These words not only appeared throughout the company on posters and in written materials, they were emphasized by management and built into our performance measures.

Was my twenty-year career with that company idyllic? Of course not. Did I experience biases and receive negative treatment from some of my colleagues for whatever reasons they deemed necessary for their own self-worth? Most certainly. Yet overall, top-down practices and support of the company’s core values overcame individual behaviors and attitudes of a few insecure or jealous people.

As a manager of other people I had to then communicate the company culture to my employees and practice the engagement, retention, and idea-encouragement behaviors with my staff.

As the culture changed after we were acquired by two other companies, I witnessed and experienced the negative effects for my staff and myself. Engagement and loyalty decreased. Communication top-down and horizontally between departments lessened and in some cases ceased. Our benefit plans changed and reduced in value. People left, including myself after twenty years, which was one of my most-difficult life decisions I made at that time.

I vowed that, whether I led people at another company (I did) or started my own (I did, later), I would create a culture similar to that which I was fortunate to experience in the early impressionable years of my corporate career. I committed to practice the engagement, retention, and idea empowerment behaviors for my employees that I learned were missing for so many of my friends, family, and contacts in other less-evolved companies and organizations.

You now understand my passion that drives me to help founders, owners, and leaders create the loyalty, energy, and ownership from the top, down, that can lead them to achieve their desired outcomes, encourage innovation, increase profitability, and cause their organizations to thrive.