You Can Copy the Playbook. You Can't Delegate Knowing Your People.

In The Wall Street Journal, Allison Pohle reports on a manufacturer that other CEOs keep traveling to study. In Bosses Want the Secrets of the Family Firm That Has Never Had a Layoff in 75 Years, she profiles The Gund Co., a St. Louis maker of composite materials with 1,300 employees. Under third-generation CEO Steve Gund, the company has averaged 18% annual growth for a decade and is approaching $400 million in sales, all without a single layoff.

Leaders from more than 200 companies have visited to learn how. Few have managed to copy it. Many try three steps of Gund's 12-step playbook and then give up, Gund told the Journal, often because the top boss handed the project to someone else, such as human resources.

That detail is the real story. The playbook isn't the hard part. The hard part is the part a CEO can't hand to anyone.

The Plan That Starts With a Person

Look at what the Gund model asks of its leaders. Every employee, from the line to management, writes an individual development plan that includes their hopes for both their job and their life. Supervisors regularly walk the shop floor and ask people what is going well, how they are taking care of each other and what could be better. Problems go up on red cards for everyone to see, which puts leaders on notice to fix them quickly.

None of that works as a form to fill out. A development plan that names someone's hopes only means something if a leader reads it, remembers it and acts on it. A floor walk only works if the people on the floor believe the questions are sincere. These are practices of attention, and attention can't be outsourced.

Pohle tells the story of Deidra Jonas, who started at Gund as a janitor 16 years ago while juggling four cleaning jobs as a single mother. A manager noticed her attention to detail and asked whether she would move into machine operations. Over time she moved to reception, then customer service, and colleagues eventually nominated her for a leadership role on the culture team. Today she travels the world running listening sessions with other employees.

No program found Deidra. A person did. Someone looked at a janitor and saw what she naturally paid attention to. I explored why that kind of recognition matters more than any perk in Where You Work Matters Less Than Who Knows You There.

Why Delegating Culture Fails

I understand why so many visiting executives assign the effort to HR. It looks like a culture initiative, and culture initiatives usually live there. But when the top leader steps away, employees read the message clearly: this matters, just not enough for the boss to do it personally.

Gund's own description of its approach is candid. As he told the Journal, "It sounds touchy-feely, but it's profitable." I'd add that it is also demanding. The company staffs lean, posts its financials in meeting rooms and manages out people who don't adapt to its high-performance culture. Gund said culture change takes two to three years. That's two to three years of a leader showing up, not two to three years of a program running in the background.

This is where many transformations stall. The steps are written down. The training is scheduled. What's missing is the daily practice of leaders knowing the people they are asking to change. I wrote about that gap in Transformation Is Happening to Your People, Not With Them.

Structure Is What Lets the Personal Scale

What I admire most about Gund is that it doesn't treat care and consistency as opposites. The 12 steps, the red cards and the three performance categories give every manager the same playbook. That consistency is an asset. It lets a company of 1,300 people across several countries deliver the same experience on every shift.

But the playbook only works because it is built around individuals. The structure tells leaders when to ask and where to look. What they find depends on how well they know the person in front of them. Gund is honest that this is hard. Leaders told the Journal the company is growing faster than it can develop new leaders who can do it well.

For CEOs thinking about taking a page from Gund, a few questions are worth answering first.

Which part of your culture effort have you delegated that only you can model? If your people never see you doing it, why would they believe it?

Do your managers know the hopes of the people who report to them, not just their goals for the quarter? When was the last time a development conversation changed someone's assignment?

Who in your organization is your Deidra, someone whose strengths have gone unnoticed because no one has looked closely enough?

Visitors leave Gund hoping to copy its model. The lesson worth taking home is simpler and harder: a culture built on knowing people requires leaders who do the knowing themselves.

You can copy another company's playbook, but no one can do the work of knowing your people for you.

Want to explore these ideas further? Learn more about my work on leadership, identity and conviction at www.theglennllopis.com.