I write this from a particular Procter & Gamble perspective but with the thought that it is potentially relevant to other organizations, whether for-profit or non-profit.
In my book, "What Really Matters", I draw a distinction among an "Organization" (which might be any company or non-profit), an "Institution" (which I define as an organization which has achieved a sustained existence and defined, generally positive reputation, e.g. the Mayo Clinic, the Smithsonian, Procter & Gamble, Walt Disney ) and a "Community", which I define as an institution whose members have developed over time both shared and intimate contact with one another and a sense of shared purpose and values which leads to a high degree of mutual trust, admiration, respect and affection.
For me and many others, P&G is not only an institution but a community.
The benefits of being a community are many: greater loyalty, better retention, more open and honest communications, greater collegiality. Being a community does not suggest a lack of diversity. To the contrary, one of the benefits--and joys--of being a community comes in the full and authentic appreciation of diversity.
Which brings me to a recent reunion of P&G retirees in London England. Upwards of 60 P&G retirees and their spouses assembled for two days of renewed friendship. Most of us had been retired for 15-25 years. We came from around the world including Canada, the United States, Australia, Germany, Austria, France and Belgium.
We were treated to special events: a boat trip on the Thames; a tour of the Tower of London; a walk in London's East End; all wrapped up with a gala dinner at the Caledonian Club, described as a "little piece of Scotland in the heart of Belgravia".
However, what made these two days special, what explains why we made the trip, why we relished being there was the opportunity to renew friendships formed over many years, in fact over decades.
From start to finish the conversation was non-stop, animated, filled with broad smiles, stories of the past and stories of what everyone was doing now, and expressed satisfaction and pride that the company we still felt intimately part of despite our retirement more than a decade ago of was doing well.
How many retirees from an organization would travel so far and with such joy for a reunion, we asked ourselves. Surely very few.
We likened it to a "family" reunion. That's what it felt like.
I felt it would be worth trying to answer the questions: "what exactly accounts for this feeling? What enabled it to develop?"
Of course I can only speak with confidence for myself; but I believe I speak for many others.
1. We worked together and came to know one another over a long period of time in many different circumstances: many filled with challenge; many marked by great opportunity. For example, I worked with my good friend Wolfgang Berndt and came to know his wife, Traudl, first in Italy 45 years ago. Later, we worked together in the United States, Germany, the U.K., Belgium, Russia, Canada and Latin America. Similar stories could be told by almost everyone at our Reunion.
Clearly one of the benefits of most executives at P&G coming early in their career and staying for its entirety, in many assignments, is to provide the opportunity for this type of deep association.
2. The employees and their spouses had been together on many, many occasions. They had come to know one another. Strong personal relationships had formed. Though year end gatherings. By spouses accompanying their partners on many trips. Hence, it was no surprise that our reunion didn't simply see retired employees taking to fellow retirees. No, we saw spouses talking to spouses; couples deeply engaged talking to other couples.
This was a family affair.
3. We were united by a common set of personal values which we all believed had been nurtured by our time at P&G and which despite business challenges P&G has faced (as any company will over time) we believed were still alive and well. And we took great satisfaction and pride from that. A video message from P&G's current CEOl, David Taylor, underscored his commitment to these values--of excellence, of winning, of mutual respect and responsible contribution to the community.
In my brief remarks at dinner, I offered the point of view that in an era of eroding confidence in so many of our institutions, it is more important than ever that a business represent and provide a haven of good values with which people of principle want to be associated. Doing so will have multiple benefits: attracting and retaining strong women and men of high capability and values; and earning the respect of consumers and customers and government authorities.
It will do another thing which this P&G reunion in London amply affirmed.
It will create a lasting source of satisfaction and joy for men and women long retired from active service. That's a wonderful and consequential thing. In this respect it perhaps can be likened to a college reunion. And while hard to quantitatively measure there are surely benefits for the organization whether that be loyalty to an organization's services or products or positive word-of-mouth in all things that matter.
Eroding Confidence in Our Institutions; Some Personal Observations on Its Implications
May 15, 2019
The chart below documents what most of us have been reading about..and feeling. Some personal comments follow the chart.
How Much Confidence do You have in….(%)
(Gallup Poll)
Great deal/quite a lot
|
Very little/none
|
||
Church/Organized religion
|
2018
|
38
|
27
|
1993
|
53
|
17
|
|
1973
|
65
|
11
|
|
Supreme Court
|
2018
|
37
|
18
|
1993
|
43
|
17
|
|
1973
|
45
|
17
|
|
Congress
|
2018
|
11
|
48
|
1993
|
18
|
39
|
|
1973
|
42
|
14
|
|
Organized Labor
|
2018
|
26
|
25
|
1993
|
26
|
29
|
|
1973
|
30
|
24
|
|
Business
|
2018
|
25
|
30
|
1993
|
23
|
31
|
|
1973
|
26
|
29
|
|
Public Schools
|
2018
|
29
|
27
|
1993
|
39
|
23
|
|
1973
|
58
|
11
|
|
Newspapers
|
2018
|
23
|
40
|
1993
|
31
|
25
|
|
1973
|
39
|
18
|
|
TV News
|
2018
|
20
|
45
|
1993
|
46
|
18
|
|
Military
|
2018
|
74
|
5
|
1993
|
67
|
9
|
|
1973
|
58
|
12
|
|
Presidency
|
2018
|
37
|
44
|
1993
|
43
|
23
|
|
1973
|
52
|
16
|
|
Police
|
2018
|
54
|
15
|
1993
|
52
|
12
|
Confidence_GallupPoll051419
1. It is encouraging and appropriate that confidence in the military remains high, despite the challenge represented by the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is a tribute to the men and women in our Armed Services. Also confidence in Police remains relatively high.
2. The significant drop in confidence in the Congress reflects the bitter partisanship which has impeded collaborative action.This partisanship has been enabled in part by gerrymandering which leads to candidates not needing to meet the needs of the broad electorate to get elected. They need to win their party primaries which tend to push candidates to the extreme of their party's beliefs. Gerrymandering must be overturned.
3. The sharp decline in confidence in the media (TV and newspapers) reflects the increasingly polarized reporting made possible by the numerous media channels seeking discreet, loyal audiences. This contrasts to the days when the news was delivered through 3 or 4 major news networks each of which needed to appeal to a broad audience across the political spectrum. We urgently need media forms which objectively convey honest differences in points of view on key issues.
4. The sharp decline in confidence in the Presidency in 2018 (especially the increase in negative comments) reflects the Trump presidency.
5. The decline in confidence in public schools is deeply concerning, though separate research does show people to be significantly more positive about their OWN schools.
6. The decline in confidence in church and organized religion mirrors a long term decline in people's attending religious services. I am not clear on the reasons for this. Scandals my account for part of it. More people (including some members of my own family) express the belief they are experiencing God and spirituality outside of church, for example in nature.
7. Importantly, this broad decline in confidence in many of our institutions accentuates the importance of the family as the foundational institution (which it has always been) for nurturing the sense of well being and community and mutual love and for conveying the values of mutual respect which we aim to live by.
We should take any and all action which bear on helping families achieve a sustainable existence. This will involve addressing the roots of poverty, support for early child care and development, providing affordable health care for all, eliminating criminal justice policies which needlessly break up families and confronting the drug crisis. .
I also believe this broad decline in institutional confidence, together with the desire of most if not all people to be associated with other people of high values, accentuates the importance of business leaders' pursuing a mission, and taking actions and providing a value based environment which enlivens and realizes the commitment to do the right thing, for the business, the community and fellow employees. The role of business in promoting and actualizing the values by which we want to live is more important today than ever.
William Burn's "The Back Channel" - The Finest Diplomatic Memoir I Have Ever Read
May 2, 2019
This is the best diplomatic memoir I have ever read. Informed, illuminating day-to-day events with amazing candor, including remarkably honest recognition of what the author (Burns) felt to be personal mistakes as well as those carried out by the State Department.
There were many confirmatory revelations for me.
The poorly considered and destructive impact of the expansion of NATO, the “killer” being the suggested expansion of the EU and likely then NATO to the Ukraine and Georgia. Putin and Russian’s of all stripes made it clear that this was a red line that could not be crossed.
Burns was in Moscow in 1995. He writes that Talbot as well as Secretary of Defense Bill Perry worried that starting down the road to form an enlargement of NATO would undermine hopes for a more enduring partnership with Russia undercutting reformers who would see it as a vote of no confidence in their efforts, a hedge against the likely failure of reform. “We shared similar concerns at Embassy Moscow. The challenge for us,” Burns wrote, in fall 1995, “is to look past the parent government of Russia’s often irritating rhetoric and the erratic and reactive diplomacy to our own long-term self interest. That demands, in particular, that we continue to seek to build a secure order in Europe sufficiently in Russia’s interests so that a revived Russia will have no compelling reason to revise it—and so that in the meantime the ‘stab in the back’ theorists will have only limited room for maneuver in Russian politics.” Sadly, we did not follow this advice.
For a time, we pursued the “Partnership for Peace,” a kind of NATO halfway house, but we did not pursue it aggressively, nor did Russia.
Putin’s increasing inclination to see a plot against him and Russia from almost every event, including protests about his decision to continue as president, is made abundantly clear.
Burns rightly describes Putin’s (and many Russians) intent as he writes “often as preoccupied with their sense of exceptionalism as Americans were, they sought a distinctive political and economic system, which would safeguard the individual freedoms and economic possibilities denied them under Communism, and ensure them a place among the handful of world powers.”
Burns continues with these personal words that I would echo: “I like Russians, respected their culture, enjoy their language and was endlessly fascinated by the tangled history of U.S.-Russian diplomacy.”
The history of our invidious inclination to pursue regime change is honestly described. Starting with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and Iraq which Burns and most of the State Department vigorously opposed, including the war that precipitated it. He sadly writes: “Having lost the argument to avoid war, we had two main goals in shaping it and managing the inevitable risks.” They were going about “choosing between a smart way and a dumb way of bringing it (the regime change) about.” The Pentagon had taken over leadership from the State Department, together with Vice President Cheney and his office.
The regime change went on in Libya with the overthrow of Kaddafi, not intended, but likely inevitable with the actions we took. A slippery slope it turned out to be. Not for the first time.
Then we went on, with phone calls from Obama, telling Mubarak to step down in Egypt.
Elsewhere, Burns writes about his growing recognition of “the quality and increasing self-confidence of Chinese diplomacy.” That does not surprise me. It is exactly how I felt about Chinese leadership in the government and in business.
Burns tells the story of the negotiations which led to the anti-nuclear proliferation treaty with Iran in great detail. It was an extraordinary journey. Building of trust on both sides. Not perfect in the outcome, as Burns described it. They should have pushed for a longer period. But the best that could be obtained. This saga makes me doubly sorry that Trump pulled out of it. What a hit to our credibility, not just with Iran; but with our allies.
Burns is brutally honest in his assessment of how he sees the state department needing to change in the future. He confesses to its being too “cautious, reactive and detached,” too bureaucratic, not effectively tied to the Hill, not adequately conveying the importance of diplomacy to the American public through illumination of the specific accomplishments it has enabled.
He advocates greater “candor and transparency (in describing)” the purpose and limits of American engagement abroad. “It is more effective to level with the American people about the challenges we face and the choices we make than to wrap them in the tattered robe of untampered exceptionalism or fan fears of external threats. Over promising and under delivery is the surest way to undermine the case for American diplomacy.”
Or anything else for that matter.
He advocates the importance of aligning our policies with “ensuring that the American middle class is positioned as well as possible for success in a hyper competitive world, that we build open and equitable trading systems, and that we don’t shy away from holding to account those who do not play by the rules of the game.”
I applaud his summation of our relationship with Russia. “A more durable 21st century European security architecture has alluded us in nearly three decades of fitful attempts to engage post-Cold War Russia that is not likely to change any time soon—certainly not during Putin’s tenure. Ours should be a long game strategy, not giving into Putin’s aggressive score settling, but not giving up on the possibility of an eventual mellowing of relations beyond him, nor can we afford to ignore the need for guardrails in managing an often adversarial relationship—sustaining communication between our militaries and our diplomats, and preserving what we can of a collapsing arms control architecture.” This is essential for the future of the world.
I believe very much in what he wrote next. “Over time, Russia’s stake in healthy relations with Europe and Americana may grow, as a slow-motion collision with China and Central Asia looms.”
Burns’ book shares a lot of sad tales. Beyond those I have already mentioned, there is the description of the thwarted efforts to bring the Palestinians and Israelis together. Once again, Burns and most of the state department saw our policies which favored Israel and demoted the interests of Palestine as making the creation of a two-state solution unlikely to impossible.
There were many confirmatory revelations for me.
The poorly considered and destructive impact of the expansion of NATO, the “killer” being the suggested expansion of the EU and likely then NATO to the Ukraine and Georgia. Putin and Russian’s of all stripes made it clear that this was a red line that could not be crossed.
Burns was in Moscow in 1995. He writes that Talbot as well as Secretary of Defense Bill Perry worried that starting down the road to form an enlargement of NATO would undermine hopes for a more enduring partnership with Russia undercutting reformers who would see it as a vote of no confidence in their efforts, a hedge against the likely failure of reform. “We shared similar concerns at Embassy Moscow. The challenge for us,” Burns wrote, in fall 1995, “is to look past the parent government of Russia’s often irritating rhetoric and the erratic and reactive diplomacy to our own long-term self interest. That demands, in particular, that we continue to seek to build a secure order in Europe sufficiently in Russia’s interests so that a revived Russia will have no compelling reason to revise it—and so that in the meantime the ‘stab in the back’ theorists will have only limited room for maneuver in Russian politics.” Sadly, we did not follow this advice.
For a time, we pursued the “Partnership for Peace,” a kind of NATO halfway house, but we did not pursue it aggressively, nor did Russia.
Putin’s increasing inclination to see a plot against him and Russia from almost every event, including protests about his decision to continue as president, is made abundantly clear.
Burns rightly describes Putin’s (and many Russians) intent as he writes “often as preoccupied with their sense of exceptionalism as Americans were, they sought a distinctive political and economic system, which would safeguard the individual freedoms and economic possibilities denied them under Communism, and ensure them a place among the handful of world powers.”
Burns continues with these personal words that I would echo: “I like Russians, respected their culture, enjoy their language and was endlessly fascinated by the tangled history of U.S.-Russian diplomacy.”
The history of our invidious inclination to pursue regime change is honestly described. Starting with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and Iraq which Burns and most of the State Department vigorously opposed, including the war that precipitated it. He sadly writes: “Having lost the argument to avoid war, we had two main goals in shaping it and managing the inevitable risks.” They were going about “choosing between a smart way and a dumb way of bringing it (the regime change) about.” The Pentagon had taken over leadership from the State Department, together with Vice President Cheney and his office.
The regime change went on in Libya with the overthrow of Kaddafi, not intended, but likely inevitable with the actions we took. A slippery slope it turned out to be. Not for the first time.
Then we went on, with phone calls from Obama, telling Mubarak to step down in Egypt.
Elsewhere, Burns writes about his growing recognition of “the quality and increasing self-confidence of Chinese diplomacy.” That does not surprise me. It is exactly how I felt about Chinese leadership in the government and in business.
Burns tells the story of the negotiations which led to the anti-nuclear proliferation treaty with Iran in great detail. It was an extraordinary journey. Building of trust on both sides. Not perfect in the outcome, as Burns described it. They should have pushed for a longer period. But the best that could be obtained. This saga makes me doubly sorry that Trump pulled out of it. What a hit to our credibility, not just with Iran; but with our allies.
Burns is brutally honest in his assessment of how he sees the state department needing to change in the future. He confesses to its being too “cautious, reactive and detached,” too bureaucratic, not effectively tied to the Hill, not adequately conveying the importance of diplomacy to the American public through illumination of the specific accomplishments it has enabled.
He advocates greater “candor and transparency (in describing)” the purpose and limits of American engagement abroad. “It is more effective to level with the American people about the challenges we face and the choices we make than to wrap them in the tattered robe of untampered exceptionalism or fan fears of external threats. Over promising and under delivery is the surest way to undermine the case for American diplomacy.”
Or anything else for that matter.
He advocates the importance of aligning our policies with “ensuring that the American middle class is positioned as well as possible for success in a hyper competitive world, that we build open and equitable trading systems, and that we don’t shy away from holding to account those who do not play by the rules of the game.”
I applaud his summation of our relationship with Russia. “A more durable 21st century European security architecture has alluded us in nearly three decades of fitful attempts to engage post-Cold War Russia that is not likely to change any time soon—certainly not during Putin’s tenure. Ours should be a long game strategy, not giving into Putin’s aggressive score settling, but not giving up on the possibility of an eventual mellowing of relations beyond him, nor can we afford to ignore the need for guardrails in managing an often adversarial relationship—sustaining communication between our militaries and our diplomats, and preserving what we can of a collapsing arms control architecture.” This is essential for the future of the world.
I believe very much in what he wrote next. “Over time, Russia’s stake in healthy relations with Europe and Americana may grow, as a slow-motion collision with China and Central Asia looms.”
Burns’ book shares a lot of sad tales. Beyond those I have already mentioned, there is the description of the thwarted efforts to bring the Palestinians and Israelis together. Once again, Burns and most of the state department saw our policies which favored Israel and demoted the interests of Palestine as making the creation of a two-state solution unlikely to impossible.
Here is a question which looms large to me in reading this memoir which Burns touches on but does not address directly: why were the State Department and its leaders unable to play a stronger role in making happen what they thought should happen.
To be sure, the outcomes were not totally bleak. While it has been unwound by the U.S, (but not the other signatories), the Iranian treaty was a diplomatic victory. So was the Paris Climate Treaty and, while he doesn’t talk about it at length, I’d imagine the Trans-Pacific Partnership was another. Tragically, all three of these accomplishments have been dismissed by the Trump administration. However, on other truly crucial events, the invasion of Iraq, the expansion of NATO with its impact on U.S.-Russia relations, Libya (though the state department as split on this), and Egypt, the beliefs of our most trained, experienced diplomats failed to carry the day.
One thing for sure. This argues for an extraordinarily strong Secretary of State. We had that in Jim Baker.
And that Secretary of State has to be respected by and aligned with a wise President. Again, we had that with Jim Baker and George H.W. Bush.
We need this in the next Administration.
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