Architecting a Culture of Candour

A famous advertisement for New York Fries that features a silicon beauty holding a cup of fries sports a clever slogan - REAL FRIES IN A FAKE WORLD….Whether their claim is valid or not, we know we’re living in a fake world. Honesty might still be the best policy, but few people seem to adopt it nowadays. It’s growing extinct even faster in the business world. Inside companies, people lie outright or withhold information and keep their bosses in the dark about unpleasant news. Also, companies deceive customers by offering low-quality products at exorbitant prices. Admittedly, it seems that the falsehood is more marketable than the truth. Against this background, building a culture of candour seems to be almost counter-intuitive. But, the truth is it isn’t.  In ‘A Culture of Candour’ (HBR June 2009), James O’Toole and Warren Bennis, two prominent leadership scholars, outline the vital steps for building a culture of candour.

It all starts with encouraging people to tell the truth. But, this isn’t as simple as it sounds. It’s never easy for people lower in the hierarchy to tell unpalatable truths to those at the top. It’s impossible in a culture where the messenger gets shot for bringing bad news. Therefore, as a business leader, you should encourage your people to speak the truth and be always ready to listen to bad news without rushing to judgment. In fact, before you can get your people to be honest with you, you should make a conscious effort to tell the truth yourself. Build a reputation for straight-talk and people will reciprocate soon.

But, there’re complexities. While dishonesty is generally known to favour the dishonest, sometimes it isn’t the case. Some business leaders tend to avoid confronting their people with candid feedback on their performance. This arises from their deep internal urge to be liked by others. Thus, they either wink at their people’s ‘less than satisfactory’ performance or offer sugarcoated vague criticism that does little to convince people of their dismal performance. As the former CEO of General Electric (GE), Jack Welch opines, such ‘false sympathy’ does more harm to the business in the long run. Business leaders should be empathetic and persuasive not ruthless and coercive; still, where it counts, you should have the courage to call a spade a spade.

Another vital step in the process of building a culture of candour is rewarding contrarians. To be honest, very few of us have the nerve to stand up against the opinions held by the majority and risk being called a cynic and earning their collective wrath. Still, if you are to rid your organizations of the groupthink, you badly need contrarians who think differently and spot dimensions of an issue that you can’t. Contrarians, mind you, are distinctly different from the cynics who just carpe out of the sheer force of habit and are too lazy and sloppy and seek to avoid at all cost the burden of a new project or initiative. True contrarians thoroughly weigh the pros & cons of a proposed project, but beg to differ for compelling reasons and articulate their objections. Whereas you may feel they’re a thorn on the side, it’s still advisable to heed them and encourage them to stay contrarian.

If you rely solely on one or two people for learning what’s going on inside your organization, that’s not going to help you much in building a culture of candour. Why, everyone is biased and has their own agenda to serve. Therefore, you have to diversify your sources of information. Here, it’s essential that you communicate regularly with different groups of employees, customers and competitors. Once you get into the habit of doing this, your own understanding will become nuanced and multi-faceted. You don’t have to know everything that’s going on to lead your company. But, once you sense something is out of order, keep probing until the truth surfaces.  Most of the top business leaders are gifted interrogators and they know very few people can resist the pressure of grilling even for a couple of minutes.

If you concede your mistakes and don’t behave as if you’re superhuman and infallible, it’ll give your people the leeway to do the same. It’ll keep people from sweeping things under the carpet or from disavowing responsibility for their mistakes. It’s imperative that you, also, protect the whistle-blowers in your organization; they’ll divulge to you the sordid issues in your organization before they escalate into massive crises. Ensuring a free flow of information inside the organization too contributes hugely to build a culture of candour. Setting information free doesn’t mean, however, that KFC should share their recipe with all its employees or Facebook should give its source-code to its employees. Also, in the event of a serious crisis, say, a costly accident, admitting to failure on ethical grounds may be implicated in insurance companies’ refusal to pay the claim. In such a scenario, candour might possibly force your business into bankruptcy.

All in all, building a culture of candour is no easy feat; but, it’s worth the trouble.