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(The name of the company and certain situations are disguised due to a confidentiality agreement. The actual client approved this case study)
The CEO's assessment sounded positive at first. "My executives meet their numbers. We stand out from our competitors by making the numbers quarter after quarter and year after year-seven years in a row, in fact."
Then came the Big But. "But it's come to my attention that some leaders leave wreckage and bodies along their path," said Chester Gates II, Chief Executive Officer of PEPR (an acronym for Petroleum Exploration, Production, and Refining). "The job of running the company," he argues, "is beyond the ability of any one person. We need really strong leaders, who really care about the success of the company, who understand the goals and outcomes and are working on them. I expect results, and I also want to develop new leaders and encourage people to think creatively without worrying about being shot down. Should I send the executives out to a leadership development program, Scott?"
Scott was the Moravec and Associates lead consultant at PEPR global offices in Houston. He wasn't surprised by the remarks, as the CEO had grumbled about this topic before. But this time he sensed from Gates' demeanor that it was time to act.
Scott's primary assignment at PEPR was to facilitate Gates' management and board meetings, allowing Gates to focus on the content. Now he brought his expertise and familiarity with PEPR to bear on the leadership challenge.
At a meeting of the top 150 executives, he proposed that all PEPR managers would be held accountable both for making the numbers and living the values. Everyone knew the significance of meeting the numbers. Living the values was something else. After a highly charged discussion, in which the problems were laid out and examined, the group agreed in principle to elevate "values" to the level of "numbers."
At a subsequent meeting the executives agreed to deploy Moravec and Associates' Leadership for Results (LFR) initiative to guide them to the desired behavior outcomes. LFR synthesized PEPR values into categories and identified behaviors specific to each value. These categories were then linked to the business goals.
Lessons learned from the first year of LFR were refined and elaborated to align with the business goals for year two. Following the second year, LFR was adopted as a standard for leaders at every level. PEPR is finding it easier to develop and retain new leaders now, and they all know they are expected to achieve, as Gates puts it, "all our numbers-including leadership results."