Five Causes and Cures for Corporate Cancer
By Dave Anderson
Companies that decline or desist often blame competition, the economy or inventories for their demise. However, more often than not, external forces rarely "do in" failing firms. They just can't get out of their own way, and, therefore, self-destruct. The biggest threat to your survival comes from the inside, not the outside: from corporate cancerous people, policies, attitudes or strategies that diminish the vitality of your enterprise, eventually leaving it disabled or dead. Following are five causes and cures for corporate cancer. When left unchecked, these forces extol a heavy price on profits and productivity and eventually reduce your once-thriving enterprise to insignificance, at best case, and extinction at worst.
1. Purveyors of gossip, rumors and discontent.
These people are poisonous pollutants. They create continual distractions and destroy momentum. They're divisive, manipulative losers who flock together and become a fellowship of the miserable. A cure for this cancer is to improve communication within your operation. When leaders fail to stay in touch with their team, to explain clearly and consistently where the dealership is going, how it will get there, what it's doing and why, gossip, rumors and seeds of discontent are sown and watered. Failing to provide concise, honest communication opens the door for the small-minded to fill the verbal vacuum. The only cure for those who persist in this sabotage is to kick them out the door.
2. Yesterday's heroes.
Yesterday's heroes are fine as long as they're still producing. Those who aren't and insist on borrowing credibility from the past are cancers that lower the bar for everyone and send the wrong message about performance standards and expectations. Tenure and credentials don't substitute for results, and this group spends more time polishing image than performing. I know, I know, many of these people are "loyal." But when the number of candles on their cake outnumbers their recent accomplishments you have three choices: Stretch them, reassign them to a position where they can succeed or sever them. Anything less is cowardly compromise.
3. Liars, cheats and thieves.
Are you kidding? Fire them. Fire them all. Enough said.
4. Anyone infected with the "Disease of Me."
This cancer includes anyone more concerned with their personal agenda than the good of the team. This scarcity mentality causes people to believe that anything anyone else gets means there's that much less for them. These lone wolves are disloyal, selfish and possessed by the unholy trinity of "me, myself and I." This cancer often is brought on by unhealthy internal competition and can be cured by creating a vision for your organization that galvanizes the team rather than divides it; by hiring leaders who know how to reinforce positively, motivate and keep their team focused on a common goal. It's also incumbent upon managers to model a team ethic by working well together, and upon a dealer who not to get his jollies from confrontation and sadistically pitting one department head against another just to keep everyone "on their toes."
5. Standards that accept mediocrity and the voluntary lack of personal progress.
This cancer can be seen in the following areas: pay plans that financially reward average performances, managers who accept "best efforts" and fail to stretch everyone from top to bottom to a higher result-orientation, failing to train effectively and market creatively, attitudes that violently resist change because "we've done just fine in the past," queasy leaders who won't make tough decisions because they don't want to "rock the boat," hiring standards that make it easy for the average to climb on board, a climate void of urgency and focus because "we're doing better than last month or last year," a willingness to pace rather than race, a pattern of setting and hitting "no-brainer" forecasts and thinking you've "arrived," failing to develop innovative strategies and opting for "business as usual," an unhealthy and unnatural affection for the status quo throughout the rank and file, and employees more committed to personal security than personal development. The initial cure for this long list of ailments begins and ends with two words: effective leadership. Anything less is simply hacking at the leaves and will never strike at the root.
Effective leaders set performance standards that stretch people, create a vision that inspires, change before they have to, attack the status quo, use energy to create daily focus, urgency and momentum, equip their people with superior training tools and are committed to personal growth. The example they model and the environment they create is their best recruiting tool, attracting eagles and flushing out turkeys. Effective leaders beat corporate cancer by developing other leaders at all levels in the organization: empowering them to act, decide, change and initiate. They take the human capital they're entrusted with and make it more valuable for tomorrow by refusing to devote their energies strictly to making others happy and maintaining the organization: instead committing to making people better by stretching and challenging them.
These five causes of corporate cancer are not the only perils your dealership faces but they are common and lethal. Detecting the cancer in your company is easy: curing it takes action and resolve. Too many dealers curse the effect of cancer in their store; yet nurture the cause by taking a casual approach to destroying it. But casualness leads to casualties and while you'll never exorcise all cancer out of your business-after all we are still imperfect beings-you can do much more to isolate, control and eliminate it. Don't allow whatever great results you're having in this world-record economy to seduce you into inertia, or worse, indifference. Unfortunately, the fact that we have so much can cause us to settle for so little. If you know what you must do to cure the cancer in your operation yet fail to act, perhaps it's time you trek to Oz and ask the Wizard for some courage. When you don't pay the price to cure the cancer in your company you become a willing collaborator in its progressive deterioration and eventual demise.
Dave Anderson is President of The Dave Anderson Corporation, a sales, management and leadership training concern. danderson@dealeronline.com
