Quietly and almost secretly a revolution in business has been occurring. Not, as you might suspect, by a number of newer, unknown enterprises but by the biggest, best and most-established companies in the world. Not only has this change or revolution been slowly and steadily developing, popular business books the world over have been describing it for twenty years: In Search of Excellence, Built to Last, Good to Great, The World's Most Admired Companies, First, Break all the Rules, Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? What (Really) Works, and others.

The common theme of all these books is that when companies respect all the employees and take steps to ensure that some respect mechanism is in place throughout the enterprise in a lasting way, good things start to happen, keep on happening and lead to corporate greatness. Collectively, these authors demonstrate how 'respect' is the foundation on which all successful group endeavours thrive. This writer terms it: The Respect Revolution. The concept forms the basis for this paper and a book series (13) of the same name.

The Basic Premise

Respect begins with the recognition that the individual has a personal sovereignty over thought, ideas and the freedom to express them without censure in any form, regardless of rank or position. Respect means honoring all commitments made and especially respecting other people's time. Punctuality is a manifestation of respect. Cancelling engagements or events shows lack of respect. Meeting commitments of verbal agreements (which are, nonetheless, contracts) shows respect for the individual.

To make respect in a company work, the President has to respect the Janitor, that is, to listen carefully to the Janitor, to acknowledge the listening and to meet all commitments, verbal or written made to the Janitor, treating those commitments as important as those made to the Board of Directors or anyone else. Listening implies giving validity to another person's thoughts without necessarily agreeing with it. (By the way, the word Janitor is capitalized here to give it the same respect as President – not the same status, but the same respect.)

Dr. Ichak Adizes [1] and the Adizes Institute of Santa Barbara California may have been the first commercial enterprise to openly advocate respect as a major management tool for success. He applied it practically to companies that are household names around the world such as Shell Oil, Charles Schwab Investors, Domino's Pizza, The Body Shop as well as thousands of other corporations where he is credited for enhancing their performances considerably.

Why Respect is required

How can any person remain in control of the decisions that lie before the individual? How can the person be listened to? How can the person take actions, which will give that individual a sense of accomplishment and thus, a sense of being valued? How can this person consistently arrive at ideal results?

Only one action will ensure this – the giving and receiving of respect.

If we are fortunate, developing respect will begin in childhood:

All of us have a basic need to be "origins" in our lives rather than "pawns" as one researcher put it*. It's important to experience a sense of autonomy, a feeling that we are the initiators of much of what we do. In fact, the particular choices we make are often less significant than the act of choosing itself.

This need for autonomy in our decision-making begins in infancy and is a pillar of Alfie Kohn's message for Unconditional Parenting [2], an insightful means to assist your children to become responsible, productive and happy adults.

(*Attributed to Psychologist Richard de Charms[2])

However, most children are not so fortunate as to be exposed to Mr. Kohn's philosophies and methods. Instead the workplace is made up of mostly disadvantaged adults who have been subjected to all forms of disrespect all their lives – from parents, siblings, teachers, school-yard bullies, coaches, military commanders, supervisors and bosses. While most adults understand and appreciate respect, most do not experience it much of the time and most do not apply it much of the time. As a result, most people have no idea of the power that respect confers on its adherents.

Let the Evidence Roll in

A huge body of information weighs in favor of the case that supports the need for respect in the making of successful enterprises. Some pieces are:

Evidence 1: In Search of Excellence (1988)

Evidence 2: Built-to-Last Study (1994)

Evidence 3: Johnson and Johnson Study

(1995)

Evidence 4: Fortune/Hayes Study (1997)

Evidence 5: Federal Government Study

(1999)

Evidence 6: Gallup Study (1999)

Evidence 7: Good to Great Study (2001)

Evidence 8: Canadian Policy Research

Network Study (2002)

Evidence 9: Who Says Elephants Can't

Dance? (2002)

Evidence 10: Evergreen Project: What

(Really) Works (2005)

Evidence 11: What has been said so far

i. In Search of Excellence (1988)

In Search of Excellence, by Thomas Peters [3] subtitled Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies, reputed to be the best-selling business book extant, explains the patience needed to be at the very top; imbedded throughout is the need to respect people at all levels of the organization.

ii. Built-to-Last Study (1994)

Built to Last, by Collins and Porras, [4] concluded from a six-year study that companies can have their cake and eat it too. Great firms enjoy ethics, profit, and fun simultaneously by establishing core values, including respect, and by installing the right balance of processes.

iii. Johnson & Johnson Study (1995)

The Transformation of Management, by Michael Davidson, [5] describes the Johnson & Johnson's (J & J) Tylenol debacle of the 1970s that was rescued by the company following the beliefs of its credo. To pull Tylenol from the shelves around the world due to "contamination" in Chicago cost J & J hundreds of millions of dollars. Ten months later, J & J had 90% of its original market share back. By the1980s, the share was even higher than the original.

Due to prompting by skeptics who viewed J & J's action as "smart marketing" rather than J & J's pursuit of its own respect-based ethics, J & J, in 1983, initiated a study that asked if ethics paid off in hard numbers. It studied the market and identified other companies with a strong external evidence of operating with "soft" missions. They had to meet three criteria: (a) have been in existence for at least thirty years; (b) have a written set of principles, including respect for individuals; and (c) show evidence that these soft ideas had been promulgated and practiced for at least one generation. They found twenty-six companies that qualified.

Eleven companies had to be dropped from the study because they had not been "public" long enough to be able to examine their earlier stock market values. Among the eleven excluded were: HP, Levi Strauss, and McDonald's. The final fifteen were: AT&T, Coca-Cola, Eastman Kodak, General Foods, Gerber, IBM, J.C. Penney, John Deere, J & J, Pitney Bowes, Proctor & Gamble, R.J. Reynolds, Sun, 3M, and Xerox. Over that time period, analysis showed the Dow Jones Index had risen to 1200 for identified and substantial competitors to the above. For the fifteen soft companies, the stock market value was 9400, outperforming their competitors by a factor of eight. Their method was to make their first priority not profit, but serving the public better than their competition through a clarified set of values. Key among these values was respect.

Note: It is as a result of the Tylenol incident that publicly available consumables are now sealed to avoid undetected tampering. This is a case of how misfortune often turns to an advantage over the long term.

iv. Fortune/Hayes Study (1997)

A study commissioned by Fortune magazine in 1997, [6] carried out by the Hayes Management Group, was instituted to identify the most respected firms in the world. The resulting paper identified many of the same corporations as listed in Evidences #2 and #3 above to be among their successful winners. The study found that ethics, based on respect, was a common ingredient for success.

v. Federal Government Study (1999)

A survey reported by the Ottawa Citizen on January 25, 1999 [7] indicated that three-quarters of Canada's federal civil servants were unhappy. The number one reason given was lack of respect internally. (Dissatisfaction with pay was number three.) This was followed by a similar survey two years later with essentially the same results.

vi. Gallup Study (1999)

Two studies were conducted by the Gallup Organization over a twenty-five-year time span. The first was a study of over 1,000,000 employees, asking: "What do the most talented employees need from their workplace?" Key result: Talented employees need great managers.

The second study, triggered by the first, which involved 80,000 managers, asked: "How do the world's greatest managers find, focus, and keep talented employees?" The results were compiled into a book, First, Break All the Rules, [8] and stated in summary that successful managers did not take the easy route, but pursued a very exacting path that demanded discipline, focus, and respect, manifested by their willingness to individualize employees one at a time.

Next issue we will continue with these examples and wrap up with a conclusion in Part 2. References are included in Part 2 of this article.

W.E. Caswell

Caswell Corporate Coaching Company (CCCC)

www.caswellccc.com