The Contented Cow Blog

Building Workplaces That Work

A piece of incoming email caught my eye this morning. It was from our friends at Workforce Management Magazine promoting their upcoming June issue and the feature article, “Best Practices in Talent Management.” Carroll Lachnit and crew at Workforce do good work, and I’m sure this issue will be no exception. I just wish they’d make one small change to the title, however. Let’s change the word, “best” to something a little less grandiose, like, well… better.

Having spent a good bit of the last 15 years studying leadership and employment practices, if I’ve become convinced of anything, it is that no one, repeat, no one has the market cornered on best practices in this arena. Not the ones mentioned in the annual ranking of the “100 Best Companies to Work For in America” (Fortune), not the oft-cited exemplars like Southwest Air and Google, and no, not even the firms labeled as “Contented Cows” in our first book, Contented Cows Give Better Milk.

So where’s the beef? My point is this:  Branding your employment practices as the “best” or even accepting that mantle is putting yourself on a very slippery slope. It is a bit like calling yourself the best airline. Now there’s some rarified company for you! Admittedly there are some good players out there, but unlike the game of golf, there is no Tiger Woods; no consistent, odds-on favorite.

For the organizations that have earned themselves a spot way back in the pack, the point - indeed this whole post is moot. For them, the difference between best and better is an academic exercise. But for the ones who are doing some great things in the employment arena, the “A and B players” if you will, it is best, or should I say helpful to remember that one of the keys to greatness is staying hungry. Being proclaimed the “best” interferes with that hunger because at some point, you start believing that stuff and before long, your performance suffers as your breathe your own exhaust. I saw it happen at my alma mater, FedEx, where, after about the 3rd year of being labeled one of  the “100 Best Companies to Work For in America”, we started believing our good press and stopped working so hard at improving our leadership habits. Soon thereafter, our employees noticed, as did, in succession, our customers and shareholders.

To the  point of my last post, by all means celebrate whenever you’ve got cause to do so, but just like Tiger, keep your head out of the clouds and stay hungry.

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