When words differ from actions

“Actions speak louder than words.” This saying has been repeated so many times that it has become bland. However, the meaning of it has not lost any truth and it is a lesson that is frequently relearned in a way that much more painful than would be necessary. In this post I’ll go over some of the things I’ve experienced and try to find a common thread.

Accidentally destroying morale with dumb actions

It’s easy to find examples almost everywhere you look, but some cases for reference:

• A company I once worked at spent significant amounts of time and care having meetings to try and define values together, since the company was growing and we wanted to make sure that the existing culture could be preserved. This had the effect of creating a set of values that had broad buy-in amongst the employees. A few months later, the CMO decided to replace one of the values with a new one almost overnight (and apparently without at least consulting the rest of the C-suite). While there was some minor monetary cost involved in changing the various posters and HR materials, the real cost to the company was much larger and less immediate: It showed very clearly that carefully executed initiatives were instantly overridable by the whims of executives. Almost overnight employee morale fell through the floor.
• At some point the CTO decided to instate a dedicated architectural group that was to provide technical guidance and expert advice to the various development teams about cross-cutting concerns. This company contained several frontends (web, mobile clients, etc) all served by a big backend system. The backend was hosted on a set of AWS resources maintained by a platform team. Conspicuously, all teams were represented except the team maintaining the backend. It did, of course, had a lot of people that were very publicly enthusiastic about everything the CTO said. Unsurprisingly the architectural group was not in a position to provide “expert advice about cross cutting concerns” and has mostly languished.
• An example from the Navy: when faced with massive shortfall of technical personnel in rank of sergeant, the personnel department instated a barrage of measures to keep them onboard, from salary bonuses to extra leave. However, every sergeant gets promoted to that rank from being a corporal. The rank of corporals was entirely skipped in the measures, even though a large number of those indicated they were leaving for the private sector as soon as their contractual obligations ended. A colonel of the personnel department I spoke about mentioned outright they did not need to take measures as most corporals were still under contractual obligation and could not leave. Predictably, many corporals left as soon as their contracts ended.

There are also many simpler examples, like a manager asking for input and about a plan but completely ignoring any feedback they get. I’m sure you can think of many more cases. So what gives rise to these type of scenarios? I can’t know for certain, but think it has to do with the people in question getting accustomed to their position and stopping to think about the consequences of these actions. In reality, people can only be fooled by words for a while and will eventually deduce your real standpoint from your actions.

Think about what you say with your behavior

Leadership is almost never easy, and sometimes all options are bad. However, it’s a mistake to point to this as an excuse for poorly thinking out your actions; there is also plenty of room for unforced errors. When you are in a leadership position, it is natural for others to look at you and notice not just what you say but also what you do. Don’t hamstring yourself by letting these two diverge.