Keep the Lights On

Air Force flightlines are pretty much like every other work environment when it comes to the endemic but usually good-natured antagonism between shifts. As a night shift F-15 mechanic in early 1990s, I was socialized to believe day shift deliberately broke all thet jets so we'd have to fix them, as it was our duty to do. As a training squadron, we typically utilized a high percentage of our airframes every day. Pressure to keep them airborne was relentless.

In such an environment, specialized skills are precious. Some components wore out just infrequently enough that most of us had no experience replacing them. This is where the harcore mechanics made their difference. By serially seeking out the toughest tasks, they got repetition others didn't, accumulating precious experience which could save the flying schedule.

I knew a good few of these pocket aces in my time. One particular instance of one particular individual stands out vividly more than three decades later. For the purposes of this story, we'll refer to him as Staff Sergeant Hank.

As usual, the day shift had decided to deliberately break a bunch of jets, so we were in for a grueling shift. It was summer in Phoenix, which is like Autumn on Mercury. The sun was stubborn to drop behind the mountains, and when it did the temperature dropped from insufferable to merely sufferable. A steady breeze, normally welcome in extreme heat, provided the experience of being blasted by an industrial hair dryer.

One particular jet was "hard broke." Slang: needs troubleshooting and in-depth repair. Standing in our typical half-circle, we each absorbed our assignments. When it came to the hard broke jet, Hank behaved predictably, raising his hand and taking the toughest task. He was the hardcore mechanic, and with individuals like this in our team, we knew we would deliver.

And then, it all went sideways.

Hank had been working on the top of the aircraft, with several panels removed from the spine just behind the cockpit, part of an effort to troubleshoot a flight control malfunction. The stadium lights intended to illuminate the area where he was working were burned out, and had been for weeks, despite our grumbles. Portable lights were used, but they created tricky shadows and were not as luminous.

Holding a flashlight in one hand and a wrench in the other, typical Arizona sweat making the situation extra ticklish, Hank had lost grip of the wrench while rebalancing himself and dropped it into a deep cavity within the aircraft. This was bad.

Before the repair could be finished and the aircraft buttoned up, the tool had to be recovered. This proved to be a massive challenge made more difficult by the poor lighting. A half dozen more panels were stripped off and a painstaking search conducted. By the time it was over, most of the 20-person shift was involved. It took several hours to figure out where the wrench had landed, to remove enough components to reach it, and then to fish it out. A sheet metal repair was required afterward.

The jet missed the flying schedule. In the grand scheme of things, not a big deal. But we had come up short. Unit leaders would have to explain and there would be a negative impact to someone's training timeline.

Hank had done his best in a difficult task he had voluntarily undertaken, but made an honest and rare mistake. Afterward, he was loudly castigated by unit leadership within earshot of the rest of the team. Impact to the mission was hung around his neck.

In the weeks that followed, Hank's latitude was reduced, his assignments were less challenging, and he was managed closely. All the while, rumours swirled about what the incident would do to his performance report, and therefore his promotion prospects.

At no point did leaders rebuild him publicly. They never spoke openly with the group about what happened or what we could learn. They did not invite a conversation. And at no point was any accountability taken for the broken lights which had contributed to the debacle. There was zero focus on Hank's entire body of work; it was all about his one mistake.

Unsurprisingly, he started looking for opportunities outside the unit. His skills were rare and exceptional, and everyone knew it. His reputation was strong, and within a short time, he'd left us for a selective role in another organization. Later that year, a number of new launches elsewhere resulted in the decimation of our squadron. Everyone successful at finding a role elsewhere left, and the pace of the departures hastened as it became clear the talent and experience levels were dropping. Moreover, the best performers were the first to go, not only because they had the easiest time finding other roles, but because they were the most motivated to take their skills somewhere they'd be appreciated.

Hank's influence had obviously been underestimated, but his situation was part of a broader problem. The unit was a negative working environment.

Negative organizations find it tougher to prevail. Tougher to win. Tougher to retain key personnel and therefore tougher to maintain the organizational stability and consistency that produce top results. This all makes sense. No one will give their best or stay longer than required in a negative environment.

In this example, the negativity was obvious: verbal abuse toward an employee, refusal by leaders to own their share of accountability, and encouraging (or at least failing to discourage) gossip and rumours about someone's performance.

But negativity can be a more subtle and insidious product of leadership behaviours which can seem legitimate on the surface, such as:

• Accusing employees of a "victim mentality" when they complain about insufficient resources or barriers to delivery.
• Assuming negative intent; operating by assumption rather than asking questions and seeking to understand.
• Speaking disapprovingly or uncharitably about someone in a public venue when they are not present, which is corrosive to trust.
• Micromanaging, which is taken by employees as an implication they are too dumb to structure their own work activities.

Leaders feed on confidence, and with time and success this can unintentionally slide into arrogance. Believing they're doing the right things to guide a team, they can turn the environment negative.

I'll argue these sorts of behaviours are just wrong and have no place in any work environment. There should be a presumed moral duty to give people the best possible work experience we can. People spend more than half their waking lives working; a poor work experience equals a poor quality of life. We as leaders should take responsibility for that.

But beyond being inherently wrong, negativity has real business consequences. From a 2016 study chartered by the US Chamber of Commerce:

• 48% of employees in a negative work environment decreased their effort
• 47% decreased their time investment
• 38% deliberately decreased the quality of their work
• 78% said their commitment reduced
• 66% said their performance declined

In September 2022, I had the privilege of launching a new Amazon warehouse in Liverpool, surrounded by an exceptional team of operational and functional leaders, most of whom I'd had a direct hand in selecting.

Together, we crafted a vision focused on creating the most positive work experience to be found anywhere. Our vision wasn't about results or rankings or goals. It was about the environment we sought to create, where we considered our employees internal customers, and would work to make them smile every day.

My informal rule for the building was that everyone was expected to make eye contact when passing, to smile, and to say hello. I'd learned from experience that such small gestures set an uplifting tone. A simple kindness can make all the difference to someone struggling with the pressures life throws at us. (Turns out there is a biological reality to this; acts of kindness stimulate production of neurotransmitters which give us a sense of wellbeing).

We attached to our positive vision the tenets of safety (physical and psychological), latitude, growth, and recognition. These were our value commitments; our filters for actions, policies, and processes. They helped us frame proposals by asking whether they were consistent with our positive vision. We invested time to establish consensus and ingrain this vision across our 45-person management staff.

The point of this was to encourage core values, to incentivize and champion employee wellbeing, and to make empathy prevalent in our culture. When these things are present, a genuinely positive work environment is possible. I use the word genuine deliberately; many organizations preach values, but few actually maintain alignment between values and interests as time marches on.

One year post-launch, our warehouse was the top performer of its type in the UK network, and in the top 10% of more than 120 similar operations globally. Safe, quality-focused, customer-obsessed, engaged, and cost-effective. Accountable for its failures but focused on accentuating its successes. Turnover was low, and more than a dozen managers and team leaders had been promoted. By just about any yardstick, it was a huge success. And I attribute this to the positive culture our team created.

In my travels, I have learned to analyze organizations according to both the values they claim and the interests which drive them.

Generalizing:

• Good organizations have strong value systems. They champion and celebrate their values, and intend to stick to them. Divergences between values and interests will be rare, but after a quarrel in such instances, interests will win.
• Great organizations have value systems which are aligned to their interests. There is no divergence, because great organizations will never deem it in their interest to defy their values. These organizations are principled and courageous. They are exceptionally rare and don't always stay great, because it's not easy telling stakeholders they can't have that next coveted marginal gain because it's more important to preserve the work environment.
• Mediocre organizations have value systems but don't live them because leaders have not reached their positions by exemplifying those values. They're slogans which have some meaning but lack any force. The Air Force unit in our opening story would fall into this category.
• Poor organizations don't bother with values at all. They are interest-driven, anarchist salt mines where everyone is engaged in individual interest seeking.
• Corrupt organizations use value systems as internal propaganda to shape perceptions and behaviours while actively adopting policies which subvert their stated values. This is what too often becomes of once good or once great organizations.

With value commitments, you pave the way for positivity. And with positivity, your business interests will be vindicated. But this takes persistent effort.

That Air Force unit I described wasn't always a negative place to work. It had a storied history of high achievement.

But somewhere along the line, someone let the lights go out, physically and metaphorically. Professional leadership is partially about keeping values protected and relevant, and this is more difficult than is commonly believed.

Setting the right culture goes a long way to keeping an environment positive. But without proactive and notorious effort by strong leaders over the march of time, the lights tend to grow dim and eventually burn out.

Much as we like to believe it's always darkest before the dawn, the reality is it's always darkest just before it goes totally black.

So be obsessive about keeping those lights on .... and keep smiling.