“The village knows.” Three little words have turned out to be some of the best leadership advice I’ve received in the last several years. I got them from Alabama Farmers Co-op CEO, Rivers Myres shortly after I started as we were talking about leadership and the filters between the business and the leader. “Just remember, Jeff,” he said, “The village knows.” Simple but profound. I didn’t fully grasp their importance at the time but the more I’ve learned in this role, the more important they’ve been.
- The village knows who is working hard
- The village knows who pulls their weight
- The village knows who is a jerk
- The village knows who kisses up and kicks down
- The village knows whom they can depend on when they need help
- The village knows if something’s being pencil-whipped
- The village knows if some idea is working or if it is crap
The village knows, of course, because they work day-in and day-out with each one of these people. They have no authority over them and may or may not be able to influence them to do things. They know who acts with the collective goals in mind and who free-rides, who is focused on their own individual achievements or recognition. They see how people act when the boss is away. They know who shows up early, who stays late, or who does the dishes left in the office sink. They are the ones that have to deal with the problems when the slackers don’t complete their work or turn in crappy work. The village pays the price when that person cuts corners.
The villagers talk, of course. But here’s the key — the villagers talk to one another. They rarely share everything with those outside the village. To them, the issues are obvious; “everyone” knows them. “Everyone” sees them. They assume that management does too. The village also doesn’t like to provide negative feedback. I read a Wall Street Journal article this weekend that referenced a study where people refuse to provide any type of negative feedback for fear of being perceived as a jerk. We don’t want to be perceived as judging people lest we be judged ourselves.
The end result is “The village knows” but unless outside leadership is paying very close attention, they may not. And therein lies the rub. Where the next level of management is off-site or not working with the team on a daily basis, the information gap can grow, leaving a large disconnect between what the village knows and what management knows. It is most likely and most dangerous where the site leader is the problem or the person is a salesperson and doesn’t spend as much time with the village.
And the higher up one goes in leadership, the greater the distance between the leader and the village. Thus, a key task of any leader regardless of level is to determine whether you, as a leader, know what the village knows.
How do you go about finding out what the village knows?
You have to spend time in the village. Face-to-face. You have to talk to the people one-on-one and ask questions and get them talking. You can’t do that over Zoom or Teams. Leadership is a contact sport. You have to earn their trust. When the village trusts you, it will find a way to tell you.
You also have to watch for the signals. The person’s performance is sub-par. Maybe the entire site’s performance is off. Customer retention may be below other locations or other teams. Safety incidents may be higher. And then there are the rumors. Often the village will cry for help but do so in a way that is very subtle, so they have some plausible deniability. As a leader, you need to be especially focused on looking for clues and widely dispersed patterns. Issues are often dismissed as one-offs, but if the leader steps back and looks at the larger pattern, there often is one. Is the first time someone got a DUI actually the very first time they drove drunk? Unlikely. Is the harassment complaint the first time the offending person said or did something grossly inappropriate? Unlikely. Is the written customer complaint the first time that salesperson has done something (or not done something) to upset a customer? Call me skeptical.
Finally, the higher you go, the further from the village you are and the fainter the signals are. So you have to “listen” vary carefully. Believe in coincidences. Ask follow-up questions about small incidents. You will have fewer pieces of the larger puzzle so you will have to study them closely and go searching for more pieces.
U.S. Army Ranger School has a particularly unique way – the peer review system. At the end of each of the three phases in Ranger School, students must rate the members of their squad 1 through 11, leaving themselves out. The best student is rated 1, the lowest student 11 (assuming 12 per squad). The Ranger Instructors compile the results; students scoring below certain thresholds risk failing that phase, having to start the course over or being dropped from the course altogether. Typically, the bottom one or two people in each squad are recycled. If a person is “peered” twice, they are kicked out. It is the only school in the US military that I am aware of where a student can fail solely based on the opinions of one’s peers.
The methodology is brilliant in that it allows the Ranger Instructors to learn what the village knows. Because the ranking is forced, the village cannot help but “tell” the instructors who is pulling their weight and who is not. Every student learns their peer ranking as part of their evaluation at each phase. It can be humbling. I was never the highest-ranking person in the peer review and, following a phase where I really struggled, was ranked below half. I’d never ranked below half in anything. It was humbling and scary. I vowed to dig in and pull more of my weight and my ranking improved the next phase.
Once you learn what the village knows, the question turns to whether you will do anything about it.
While it is bad that the village knows and you don’t, the worst case is when the village knows, you know, and the village knows you know, yet you don’t do anything. The risk now is the village loses faith in you. You risk becoming part of the problem.
Several years ago, I had a VP who had a group underneath him that was consistently underperforming. The plant constantly struggled with production, safety was an issue, and sales were always lagging. The manager always had great excuses for why he didn’t hit budget. He always had a plan to fix it the next year. He said all the right things. He was gung-ho for the company. But the performance consistently struggled. The VP and I had talked several times about the issue. He always wanted to give this person another chance, another benefit of the doubt. Customers seemed to like him. He seemed to try hard. The senior manager thought he could fix him with some more coaching. HR wanted more documentation. But the performance continued to struggle. Finally, I explained that I would no longer talk about the manager’s poor performance or that of his group. I would only talk about the VP’s performance, as he was responsible for everything those under him did or failed to do.
Six weeks later, the VP let the manager go. We treated him well going out the door (something I think is important for both the person being let go and the person letting the person go) but it was time. The second-in-command took over and like a rocketship, the team’s performance took off. Morale went up. Sales went up. Safety incidents went down. The village knew. The village had been “screaming” for change, but the manager had worried more about his relationship with that person and the risks associated with a change than he was about the other people in the village and the risks of not making a change.
I’m not saying we should simply run around and fire people the village doesn’t like. Finding the unsung heroes in the village is also critical, arguably more so. If I claim any talent in “finding talent” it is looking for those people in the village who have been leading the business from behind and putting them in positions to lead from the front.
Finally, your team’s culture is not what you want it to be but what you allow it to be. And what you think you are permitting and what the village thinks you are can be two very different things. Success, often, lies in your ability to understand the two. It’s not easy, but it’s worth spending time in your villages to find out.
The village knows. Do you?
Onward!
Jeff
