of their organizations. They understand that their role is to create shareholder value, and that value is ultimately a combination of a superior brand, a high-performing CEO/leadership team, consistent financial results, the ability to remain relevant and competitive in the marketplace over time, and a highly engaged, high-performing organization.
In a company, the human assets (employees, leaders, and board members) affect every facet of shareholder value. They're an integral part of the company's brand. They create service models for how to interact with customers. They establish how products will be created and introduced. They organize to accomplish good deeds for their community. Employees are the largest expense of almost every organization, but they also ensure competitiveness in the market by generating next-gen ideas, innovation, and value. There's a competitive edge for companies who spend more time innovating in a healthy gender-balanced culture rather than repeatedly hiring and training new employees before burning through them. To make the shift, we need to ask the hard questions:
If the human side of the organization is its biggest asset, why are so few companies focusing on it?
Or, better asked, why are so many companies allowing their workplace to undermine and disenfranchise the very people who create shareholder value?
Why are companies still slow to address the disproportionate ways companies hold back women despite every available metric demonstrating their equally valuable contributions alongside men?
In today's organizations, there is a stark difference between people who are great leaders and people who hold great titles.
A title does not a great leader make. How can leaders improve the workplace culture so that their teams shift from fragmented, winner-take-all competitions to high-performing teams leveraging each member's resources and unique talents? If a company's culture can undermine its strategy, let's consider what the culture of a high-performing workplace will look like.
The Solution: Shifting to a High-Performing Workplace
Today's workplace is at an inflection point and companies must make a shift if they want to remain competitive. High-performing men and women are converging in the workplace, and, so far, this coming together has been left, for the most part, unmanaged, creating unforeseen conflict, increasing the risk of lawsuits and diminishing company performance as top employees, and nearly all women, face barriers and waste their time managing threats from hypercompetitive colleagues. Companies that are prepared to harness the strengths of men, women, and high performers in general will create a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Those companies that do not can expect a path toward unprecedented peril and risk.
More women than men are earning college degrees and entering the workforce.2 Yet very few of these women hold board, C-suite, or executive positions, because men tend to promote men and are less likely to spot the barriers that hold women back. By contrast, men, who have historically dominated board, executive, and managerial positions, can feel threatened by the advancement of women in the workplace and have been ill-prepared to lead or manage them. Couple this with the fact that abusive men are being accused of illicit wrongdoing, and the workplace has left the great male leaders on shaky ground with their female colleagues.
To maximize the positive impact men and women can have in the workplace (on profitability, sustainability, increased creativity, better products – the list goes on and on), companies need to create an integrated high-performance, right-balanced culture that will align and energize both high-performing men and women under great leadership. Some might argue that most companies today are already high-achieving and getting great results—just look at the stock market, overall profitability, and the worldwide market share held by U.S. companies. And yes, in some ways U.S. companies are achieving great results. They are high-achieving. But if you check under the hood, you'll often find organizations that are wrought with chaos and inefficient human resource management. Their internal cultures and performance management systems are overly competitive, churn through their employees, and waste the many talents that women and high performers can bring to the table. The true story, the one hidden behind all the figures, is that their outcomes are typically created at the expense of the people doing the work.
But there are also high-performing companies, few and far between in corporate America, achieving results through healthier methods: they have high-performing teams maximizing their employees in sustainable ways. In these workplaces, gender-balanced teams work collaboratively and inspire the highest quality and innovation. They are engaged, productive, and encouraged about the future. They think short-, medium-, and long-term and never waiver on their core mission or vision. They have great leaders who earn the trust of their teams and celebrate their peers' successes because they hold themselves and their teams accountable to high standards. While the status quo may lead to good results, companies willing to make this shift to gender-balanced high-performing teams could achieve better, longer-lasting results while also giving their employees higher job satisfaction and quality of life.
The primary difference between a company that is high-achieving and one that is high-performing is how the company accomplishes the results through their employees – their most prized asset. A high-achieving company culture is much more sinister and short-term and could cost shareholders billions of dollars each year. A high-performing culture has the opportunity to create shareholder value over the long term and maximizes the use of its available assets. High-performing cultures recognize the many benefits of including more women in leadership roles, holding leaders accountable for their development of high performers, and reviewing how leaders are promoted by implementing a plan to make a shift happen.
The accountability for beginning this shift rests on the boards and executive leadership.
Notes
1 1 Agarwal, Dr. Pragya, “Here Is Why We Need to Talk about Bullying in the Workplace,” Forbes, July 29, 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/pragyaagarwaleurope/2018/07/29/workplace-bullying-here-is-why-we-need-to-talk-about-bullying-in-the-work-place/#5248569d3259.
2 2 Napolitano, Janet, “Women Earn More College Degrees and Men Still Earn More Money,” Forbes, September 9, 2014, https://www.forbes.com/sites/janetnapolitano/2018/09/04/women-earn-more-college-degrees-and-men-still-earn-more-money/#2480285339f1.
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