Today, I was lucky enough to be in a masterclass with Don Donovan, former president of BAE Systems. During his tenure, he grew the organisation from $150m to $2.5b turnover.
When he arrived, the company had a strong victim culture. Everyone was blaming everyone else for their problems and this was affecting every KPI they were measuring. He was pretty sure that they had the right people in place. But morale was at an all-time low, and nobody knew what to do.
He tried a number of traditional strategies, but none of them worked. Eventually he came across a consultant called George Pransky, who claimed his solution would double the productivity, halve the effort and remove all the stress.
Don had pretty much run out of options and had nothing to lose. Despite the wild claims, he said yes. They started to roll out a business success programme across all levels of the organisation.
The programme was designed to help people understand how their state of mind affected them, their work and the people around them. Starting with the leadership team, it encouraged everyone to take personal accountability for their state of mind, and to help each other notice and call each other out if needed.
The results were impressive.
Over the next 15 years, every KPI improved dramatically and they retained most their people too.
In summary he said that success comes from having the right people in a healthy state of mind. Everything else is secondary. Get this right, and you will succeed.
