When you’re feeling pressure at the office, or trying to make a deadline, it can be very tempting to just start barking orders at people. But most of the time that backfires: it's probably the most effective way to de-motivate people. In fact, not even the best generals or coaches motivate their people by simply ordering them around!

“You can’t just tell people what to do,” former Surgeon General Gale Pollock told me. “Once they understand what their contribution is and why that matters, they’re ready to step up and do whatever is necessary to help you get the mission done. There are very few people who like to be told what to do.”

Of course we all encounter crisis situations where it’s necessary to be decisive and act as quickly as possible--but I’m referring to the other 97% of the time. There’s always stress in organizations, more today than ever before, yet it’s still worth taking a bit of extra time to use the best and brightest at what they’re best and brightest at. That’s why you recruited these people!

“They’ll come up with solutions you probably never even would have dreamed of—they’ll get it done in half the time, at a higher level than you ever could have imagined,” Pollock insists.

You’ll be amazed at the results when you recruit people to outcomes instead of just telling them what to do.

Watch the video version of my interview with Gale Pollock below:

Winning loyalty from new clients in a rapidly growing and competitive global economy has never been more challenging. What special traits do the best and brightest have in common and how do they inspire their teams to create success that is “built to last” for the long term?

We launched a global study to find out. To learn the key characteristics that drive long-term success of managers and organizations, I partnered with my colleagues at the World Economic Forum, Stanford, Harvard and the Wharton School, to conduct two, worldwide research projects. The first took me into the offices and homes of over 200 of the world’s most successful leaders – from Gates to Kamprad to Branson- over a ten-year period.

The second step was to conduct a quantitative survey in 110 nations to validate the face-to-face research and identify the “DNA of enduring success.” As an entrepreneur, author and scholar, I had long been curious about these compelling questions. And as an investor, I had always “bet with my wallet” on the long-term growth and success of leaders that last.

The DNA of Lasting Growth & Success

The first step was to understand a fundamental principle established in the original Built to Last framework. Successful leaders who endure are “Clock Builders” – as opposed to “Time Tellers.” Builders, as we call them in our latest book, Success Built to Last, create a legacy of successful processes that endure for their organizations. Builders focus on how to grow their company well beyond their personal tenure at the firm, rather than simply serving as custodians of their organizations or focusing entirely on their own careers. In fact, we found that Builders in a wide range of industries have many important traits in common.

One of those factors is that Builders naturally focus on client relationships--not transactions. Rather than treat a product sale as an event, Builders are always thinking long-term to create “lifecycle” solutions for clients, or what we call Lifecycle Partnership Initiatives (LPI). Every executive who served the client was dedicated to going beyond the initial sale to see how each interaction could be an opportunity to deepen their understanding of the client’s entire value chain and business issues.

This mindset enables Builders to become an essential and inseparable component of the client’s business strategy. It shifts the relationship from just a sales process to a “partnering initiative.” This makes it possible for them to be more responsive in solving client problems, reducing their overall operating costs and orchestrating more efficient processes in ways that address the client’s overall operating margins. Quality and productivity are essential, but they are no longer enough to differentiate your service offerings. If your client knows in his or her heart that you share the same vested interest in his or her overall growth and profitability, you have changed the dynamics of the relationship in a profound way.

The strong global economic environment has been “the tide that has lifted all ships” in the past few years. The buoyant markets have benefited most world-class companies, but when the cycle ends – as it always does – it will be the leaders who will have established Lifecycle Partnership Initiatives (LPI) with their clients who will no longer be as vulnerable to fierce price competition and economic cycles.

Beyond Innovation

One of the most surprising and challenging disciplines of enduringly successful leaders is that they are experts at failure. In other words, they have developed a system to make rapid learning and improvement a core competency of their teams. This is more than “knowledge management.” Innovation, by definition, requires experimentation and risk-taking that is difficult and all too often avoided by organizations and their managers. We should not be surprised that there are so few entrepreneurs or so few intra-preneurial initiatives that are supported within organizations: companies punish rather than reward noble failures. Enduringly successful organizations don’t ignore or marginalize failure because that would mean they’re not innovating at a fast enough pace to keep up with a rapidly changing market. What is the alternative? Always make new mistakes! The best leaders take well-calculated risks and put the hard-earned “tuition” of those investments of time and effort into better products and services.

Three Dimensions of Lasting Success

Our research enabled us to take a deeper dive into understanding how world-class clients are motivated to build partnerships and deepen their commitment to leaders and their organizations. These same factors also apply to your internal workforce – creating a tool to inspire greater creative commitment and collaboration of employees who are broadly distributed around the world. In hundreds of interviews, we discovered that executives define success in three critical ways. When you clearly identify these three dimensions of success with clients and employees, you can form more effective, lasting relationships.

The first essential dimension is Meaning – it’s your job as a leader to determine what kind of lasting impact the client hopes to have in growing this business. What is his or her vision for customers and what market solutions does he or she seek? How might he or she partner with others to create this vision and reduce his or her risk? What does he or she wish his or her legacy to be and is he or she properly focused on that outcome? One of the fascinating dividends from this kind of inquiry is that many clients have not considered these questions in a thoughtful way and the conversation itself evokes a very beneficial process that deepens your relationship with your client.

The second essential dimension is ThoughtStyle. How does the client think about and provide resources for his or her core passions in this business? Why does he or she do this kind of work? How does he or she invest in innovation and use creative tools and core competencies to improve service?

The third essential dimension is ActionStyle. How does the client measure progress and take action to get things done? What system is in place to accomplish goals and create an opportunity to grow the business?

A Profitable Merger With Your Clients

In many respects, the steps you take as a leader and as an organization to understand these three essential dimensions of success (and create lifecycle partnerships) involves a sort of “merger” with your clients. As you increase your understanding of their systems, processes, measurements and culture, you link yourself with global clients in ways that will produce more sustainable growth, ignite greater loyalty, generate higher profitability and build more meaningful relationships over the long-term – in other words, you will create success built to last!

What lessons can be learned from the recent tsunami and earthquake that could transform your career? Can you imagine living without shoes?

When you consider people living in those circumstances, it's a great reminder to be thankful for what you have. But there's also something you must do, for your own sake. It's what the Dalai Lama told me was the secret to a happy life: if you're ever depressed or frustrated, the best prescription is to serve others. Find some way, large or small, to make a contribution. Sure it could be a few bucks or a couple hours of your time, but make it something for this cause or any other. Simply put, go do something for someone else.

Cynthia Dozier and her organization, The Susie Reizod Foundation, are doing just that.
They work to provide shoes for children in need, both in poor and rural areas of the U.S., as well as developing countries in Africa, Asia, Latin American and the Carribean. That's all they give: just shoes. And for many of these people, that pair of the shoes is the first and only thing they've ever owned that's new!

Here's an assignment for this week: give a helping hand, some advice or support to someone on your team, a co-worker or a neighbor. Do something small without expecting to be repaid. You never know when you might be the person without shoes.

Watch the video version of my interview with Cynthia Dozier below:

Setting and maintaining goals is a fundamental part of our lives, but also one of the most challenging. Two companies which do it better than most are Proctor & Gamble and Nokia: they work with their customers to set mutual goals so they can achieve joint outcomes. This is a great way to do business.

Bjorn Ulfberg of Nokia talked to me about a goal-setting strategy he utilizes called O.G.S.M.: Objectives, Goals, Strategies and Measures: "We start by first getting together and discussing where we all want to be in 3 years time, being bold of course. We take it way beyond what we think is possible."

The most important aspect of this strategy is that it allows people freedom and creativity, which more often than not, produces better results for everyone. "It's amazing that when you tell people what to do, they just stick to a set of rules," Ulfberg observes. "But if you present people with the problem itself and ask them how they might solve it, their solutions are in many instances more efficient. You have to trust and empower people."

Why do we work so hard to find smart people if we don't let them be creative in finding solutions and meeting goals in ways they feel they can personally own? The best way to achieve goals that matter to your team is to set those goals as a team.

Watch the video version of my interview with Bjorn Ulfberg below :

As most CEOs of public companies scramble to reduce exposure to market volatility, terrorism and share-holder suits, America's largest private company boldly heads into markets others fear to tread. Who else could invest in Russia as its economy collapsed into bankruptcy or quietly control almost a quarter of U.S. beef production as mad-cow disease flares up around the world? Cargill, for certain--and its long-term bets have consistently paid off. The Minneapolis firm, controlled by eight surviving members of the original founding Cargill and MacMillan families, grew revenues 19 percent last year to almost $60 billion, which would have ranked it among the top 20 largest U.S. companies if it were public--bigger than P&G, Boeing or J&J. In a rare interview, Warren Staley, Cargil's conservative, down-to-earth CEO, shares insights about the privileges and perils of running a private company.

You'd been here for decades before becoming CEO. What did you want to change?

I wanted to define for the corporation a set of behaviors that aligns with the strategic intent. We had a culture [that depended on] who you knew or what was going on. You discussed and made a decision, but you wanted to let everybody know "I didn't agree with this decision," and you did everything you could to make sure it wasn't successful. I hated that. So now we say, "Discuss, decide, support," and when we walk out of there we've made decision we're all going to support, diligently. It's okay to come back and say it's not working. We'll tweak it, we'll make a major change. But we will spend time trying to make this work. We have rigorous debate. We come from different backgrounds, different cultures, but I say that's the best thing the company could have--a diversity of ideas and people challenging the heck out of others.

What's the toughest thing you've had to do here?

Things like BSE [Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy or Mad Cow Disease]. A lot of people worked very hard and the economics of their business was just taken out of their hands overnight. So I spend time trying to bolster them up while they're just getting beat up by customers. The other [difficult issues] on a more personal level are once in awhile you have a rogue employee that does something. If I know him, I might talk to [him] after we've been through the situation and agreed to part company and just say, "Why did you do this?" I have had them sit in my office in tears. I've fired a few people I would have considered friends. I hate those situations. You'd like to take them back. But I never wavered.

*This is from an article I wrote for the June 2004 issue of Chief Executive Magazine.