Dangers of 'Yes' People

Please consider taking a look at this new article in Financial Management magazine titled, "How Leaders Can Avoid the Dangers of 'Yes' People" - Thank you to Hannah Pitstick for interviewing me during her research for the article, along with others such as Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor.

Cultural Enhancers, Not Yes Men or Women

Source: Pixabay

Adam Bryant, Managing Director at Merryck & Co., conducted a terrific interview recently with Dawn Zier, former CEO of Nutrisystem, a company at which she led a very successful turnaround.   Zier described what she looks for as she builds a management team.  She doesn't want yes men or women, and she doesn't want people who simply fit into the existing culture.  She wants people who bring new ideas, and who enhance the culture.  I love the concept of cultural enhancers, as opposed to the notion of finding people who fit the existing culture.  Here's an excerpt from the interview.  

One thing I always tell my team is that I don’t want “yes” people around me. That’s not helpful to the organization. What I value is a diverse set of opinions. I’ll go around the room and hear different opinions, but pretty quickly you have to come together and decide on what the path is going to be. At that point, we should all be rowing in the same direction.

But I actually don’t like to use the phrase “cultural fit” anymore. I like saying “cultural enhancers,” because you always want to continue to build and enhance the culture. So I spend a lot of time in interviews really trying to assess that. Moving from cultural fit to cultural enhancer is important because each person brings something unique to the table.

Churchill, Brooke, and Protecting Against a Sanguine Outlook

Source: Wikipedia

As mentioned in a post two weeks ago, I've been reading Andrew Roberts' incredible biography of Winston Churchill. At one point, Roberts describes Churchill's appointment of Alan Brooke as Chief of the Imperial General Staff during World War II.   Roberts writes:

As we have seen, one of the most useful insights Churchill gained from the Great War was the phenomenon he had seen in Haig's Intelligence Department.  'The temptation to tell a chief in a great position the things he most likes to hear is one of the commonest explanations of mistake policy,' he had written.  'Thus, the outlook of the leader on whose decisions fateful events depend is usually far more sanguine than the brutal facts admit.' Churchill therefore appointed men like Brooke and Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, who told him exactly whaat they thought he needed to hear.  Brooke did not seek out confrontation with the Prime Minister, but neither did he shy away from it.  He tended to choose his battles carefully, not opposing him on trivial matters.  He was to tell Moran that 'every month' of working with Churchill 'is a year off my life.'   Earlier in 1941, Lord Vansittart had told the newspaper editor W.P. Crozier that 'Churchill needs people beside him who can say quite firmly "No" when he wants to do something wrong and insist that he must not do it.  Such a man was Brooke, whom Churchill respected and whom he knew would not allow him to repeat such errors as Gallipoli or Greece.  

That's a fantastic story of the rationale behind a crucial appointment.  Every leader should reflect upon this story and learn from it.