July 15, 2022
The Better Way to Win:
Transforming Your Organization By Putting People Over Profits
Mike Amato
Aviva Publishing (2022)
ISBN: 978-1-636181-89-9
New Book Advocates Culture Change as Way to Fix a Business Crisis
Mike Amato’s The Better Way to Win: Transforming Your Organization by Putting People Over Profits tells the dynamic story of how Amato did exactly what his book title recommends, and he saw his company experience a dramatic turnaround as a result.
The story begins when Amato had recently taken on an executive role at Barclays Bank in London. Thinking he was off to a good start, he thought nothing of it when he received a call from the BBC saying that Barclays would be featured in a story the next day. Amato assumed they wanted to interview him for the story, but he was stunned when the producer revealed they were going to expose Barclays’ bad business practices on their program Whistleblower. The BBC had actually had three reporters working undercover at the bank who were now going to reveal how Barclays had a toxic culture and was mis-selling to clients to hit financial targets. Of course, Amato immediately realized this story would create a crisis for Barclays. Worse, when he watched the story, he was appalled, despite some obvious fancy footage cutting, by the truths it revealed.
The Better Way to Win details the change Amato then helped initiate at Barclays to remedy this situation. It would have been easy for him just to fire a few people and claim the problem was solved, but Amato realized the culture itself had to change because the culture was promoting the idea that such practices were acceptable or at least necessary to achieve the organization’s goals. Nor was it an easy change to institute. Barclays had 30,000 employees, and they all had to get onboard to make the change possible.
While the book focuses on Barclays’ story, Amato also makes clear how his experience there can be turned into a recipe for transforming a dysfunctional culture into a high-performing organization by engaging everyone in the organization. To change a culture, you have to begin with employee engagement, and Amato realized that was nearly nonexistent at Barclays. Not only was that an internal problem, but it made Barclays unattractive to talented workers who might have otherwise joined and benefited the organization.
To create effective change, Amato had to fight against the mindset that being in business is all about making a profit. He notes that keeping a focus on profitability actually damages it and corrupts the workplace by creating too narrow a focus, at the cost of other important business elements. When it’s all about making money, accountability, creativity, and performance get smothered. It then becomes all about survival for the workers who are trying to meet quotas rather than doing a good job in alignment with a common purpose or for the customer.
The solution is to create an intentional culture that will work for the entire organization. Amato reveals how he did this by talking to employees and benefiting from their ideas and expertise. One revealing moment came when he visited a Barclays branch in York. There he met a woman who had worked for the company for years yet had never met an executive before. Her husband also worked for Barclays, and between them they had sixty-four years of experience. Amato recognized what they could teach him, yet they had never even seen the inside of the head office. He immediately invited them to London and treated them like executives while reaping their ideas and expertise to help benefit the company.
Hopefully, your business is not in a crisis yet, but you may not even know it is until it’s too late. Most businesses that fail, as Amato documents, don’t realize they are headed for a crisis. He shares the signs that cultural degradation is occurring within your business so you can use the tools and advice he offers to turn things around before they get worse. The opportunity then exists for you to engage in “inspirational leadership,” which will increase employee engagement. This kind of leadership helps to manage employee performance, and positive performance management leads to increased profit.
Ultimately, culture isn’t what you say you do, but rather what you do when nobody else is watching. Whistleblower revealed the truth about Barclays’ culture. Amato realized the kind of culture Barclays needed was that symbolized in a famous story Amato shares. When President Kennedy visited NASA, he met the janitor. When Kennedy asked the janitor what he did at NASA, the man replied that he was helping to put a man on the moon. In other words, the janitor was able to see and be invested in the organization’s bigger purpose. He realized his simple job duties were helping to make that possible. That kind of mindset gives ownership to employees, making them feel like a vital part of the organization and its greater goals. When employees and managers have a shared vision, good things happen.
Amato closes the book by sharing his Transformation Map, which is the blueprint for how to turn around any business in crisis. He knows it works because it’s the blueprint he used to create a positive culture at Barclays.
The Better Way to Win is not pie in the sky. It is practical advice that can help any organization become more profitable by putting people first. Amato knows it’s difficult to explain to a board invested in numbers and wanting to turn around a bad situation that the solution lies in changing the culture, but he teaches how to make that tough sell easier by doing your homework and knowing what steps to take to make it happen. As Amato states, every company’s objective needs to be unleashing the talent in the organization. Leaders no longer have to micromanage. They have to get the best out of everyone so everyone buys into the company’s vision and moves toward its success. Amato states that, “Having every employee feel that the cultural transformation for Barclays was also their personal transformation was magical.” I think you’ll find The Better Way to Win is magical, especially when you start applying Amato’s advice.
For more information about Mike Amato and The Better Way to Win, visit www.AmatoSparks.com.
— Tyler R. Tichelaar, PhD and award-winning author of Iron Pioneers and Narrow Lives
